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Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations. 1989.

 
NUMBER: 461
AUTHOR: Langston Hughes (1902–67)
QUOTATION: What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy lead.

Or does it explode?
ATTRIBUTION: LANGSTON HUGHES, “Harlem,” Selected Poems of Langston Hughes, p. 268 (1959).
SUBJECTS: Dreams