Gwendolyn Brooks quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Gwendolyn Brooks

Gwendolyn Brooks Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Gwendolyn Brooks on Wise Famous Quotes.

When I start writing a poem, I don't think about models or about what anybody else in the world has done.

I think there are things for all of us to do as long as we're here and we're healthy.

Nothing could stop Mississippi.

My Poem is life, and not finished.
It shall never be finished.
My Poem is life, and can grow.

Poetry is life distilled.

Beware the easy griefs / that fool and fuel nothing.

It is lonesome, yes. For we are the last of the loud. Nevertheless, live. Conduct your blooming in the noise and whip of the whirlwind.

Life for my child is simple, and is good.

I think it must be lonely to be God.
Nobody loves a master. No.

Good health is a duty to yourself, to your contemporaries, to your inheritors, to the progress of the world.

As you get older, you find that often the wheat, disentangling itself from the chaff, comes out to meet you.

There can be no whiter whiteness than this one: An insurance man's shirt on its morning run.

What, what am I to do with all of this life?

Even if you are not ready for day
it cannot always be night.

I know that the Black emphasis must be not against white but FOR Black.

When you use the term minority or minorities
in reference to people, you're telling them that
they're less than somebody else.

Art hurts. Art urges voyages - and it is easier to stay at home.

Look at what's happening in this world. Every day there's something exciting or disturbing to write about. With all that's going on, how could I stop?

Exhaust the little moment. Soon it dies.
And be it gash or gold it will not come
Again in this identical disguise.

She was learning to love moments. To love moments for themselves.

Do not desire to fit in. Desire to oblige yourselves to lead.

At a certain moment in social proceedings, I am on FIRE to leave: I have a leaving-FIT.

Writing is a delicious agony.

Abortions will not let you forget. You remember the children you got that you did not get.

Life must be aromatic.
There must be scent, somehow there must be some.

I don't like the idea of the black race being diluted out of existence. I like the idea of all of us being here.

And if sun comes / How shall we greet him? / Shall we not dread him, / Shall we not fear him / After so lengthy a / Session with shade?

Be yourself. Don't imitate other poets. You are as important as they are.

No man can give me any word but Wait ...

Sometimes you have to deal / Devilishly with drowning men in order to swim them to shore.

I am a writer perhaps because I am not a talker.

My last defense / Is the present tense.

One reason that cats are happier than people is that they have no newspapers.

I like the concentration, the crush; I like working with language, as others like working with clay, or notes.

I've always thought of myself as a reporter.

With melted opals for my milk, Pearl-leaf for my cracker.

Art is a refining and evocative translation of the materials of the world.

Very early in life I became fascinated with the wonders language can achieve. And I began playing with words.

Each body has its art...

Be careful what you swallow. Chew!

People are so in need, in need of help.
People want so much that they do not know.

It is brave to be involved. To be not fearful to be unresolved.

This is the urgency: Live! and have your blooming in the noise of the whirlwind.

I am interested in telling my particular truth as I have seen it.

Already I am no longer looked at with lechery or love.

Truth-tellers are not always palatable. There is a preference for candy bars.

It is brave to be involved

Do not be afraid of no,
Who has so far, so very far to go.

To be in love
Is to touch things with a lighter hand.
In yourself you stretch, you are well.

The poetry is myself.

Goodness begins simply with the fact of life itself.

Don't let anyone call you a minority if you're black or Hispanic or belong to some other ethnic group. You're not less than anybody else.

What shall I give my children? who are poor, / Who are adjudged the leastwise of the land ...

Books are meat and medicine
and flame and flight and flower
steel, stitch, cloud and clout,
and drumbeats on the air.

I shall create! If not a note, a hole./If not an overture, a desecration.

We real cool. We
Left school. We
Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We
Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We
Jazz June. We
Die soon.

I tell poets that when a line just floats into your head, don't pay attention 'cause it probably has floated into somebody else's head.

There are no magics or elves / Or timely godmothers to guide us. We are lost, must / Wizard a track through our own screaming weed.

I swear to keep the dead upon my mind, / Disdain for all time to be overglad.

It frightens me to realize that, if I had died before the age of fifty, I would have died a 'Negro' fraction ...

We are each other's harvest; we are each other's business; we are each other's magnitude and bond.

I felt that I had to write. Even if I had never been published, I knew that I would go on writing, enjoying it and experiencing the challenge.

We don't ask a flower any special reason for its existence. We just look at it and are able to accept it as being something different from ourselves.

Reading is important - read between the lines. Don't swallow everything.

The music is in minors.