I did not believe political directives could be successfully applied to creative writing . . . not to poetry or fiction, which to be valid had to express as truthfully as possible the individual emotions and reactions of the writer.
Source: In Famous Black Quotations, ed. Janet Cheatham Bell, 1995.
-- Langston Hughes, (Feb 1 1902-1967), US poet, writer, editor; He was an important figure in the Harlem Renaissance who wrote The Weary Blues, 1926.