I simply came to the conclusion that I could write [dialect poetry] as well, if not better, than anybody else I knew of, ... and that by doing so I should gain a hearing. I gained the hearing, and now they don't want me to write anything but dialect.

I didn't start as a dialect poet, ... talked again and again about poetry.

I know why the caged bird sings, ah me, when his wing is bruised and his bosom sore; when he beats his bars and he would be free, it is not a carol of joy or glee, but a prayer that he sends from his heart's deep core.

[In Is Higher Education for the Negro Hopeless? Dunbar responds to an essay in which Charles Dudley Warner, a white writer, contended blacks were better suited for industrial training, not higher learning. Dismissing Warner as] one who speaks without authority, ... I believe I know my own people pretty thoroughly. I know them all classes, the high and the low, and have yet to see any young man or young woman who had the spirit of work in them before, driven from labor by a college education.

But a prayer that he sends from his heart's deep core.

When you play a team like St. X, you have to play your best, ... St. X is just a great team, so if we can just even keep up with them, we're pretty pleased. It means we're doing OK.