The forties and fifties were years of high poet-incense; the language-flowers were thickly sweet. Those flowers whined and begged white folks to pick them, to find them lovable. Then the ’60s: Independent fire!
GWENDOLYN BROOKSWhen you use the term minority or minorities in reference to people, you’re telling them that they’re less than somebody else.
More Gwendolyn Brooks Quotes
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One reason cats are happier than people is that they have no newspapers.
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I think there are things for all of us to do as long as we’re here and we’re healthy.
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Beware the easy griefs / that fool and fuel nothing.
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As you get older, you find that often the wheat, disentangling itself from the chaff, comes out to meet you.
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The music is in minors.
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When you use the term minority or minorities in reference to people, you’re telling them that they’re less than somebody else.
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Each body has its art.
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It is brave to be involved.
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What I’m fighting for now in my work… for an expression relevant to all manner of blacks, poems I could take into a tavern, into the street, into the halls of a housing project.
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We real cool. We Left school. We Lurk late. We Strike straight. We Sing sin. We Thin gin. We Jazz June. We Die soon.
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When you love a man, he becomes more than a body. His physical limbs expand, and his outline recedes, vanishes. He is rich and sweet and right. He is part of the world, the atmosphere, the blue sky and the blue water.
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Sometimes you have to deal / Devilishly with drowning men in order to swim them to shore.
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This is the urgency: Live! and have your blooming in the noise of the whirlwind.
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To be in love Is to touch things with a lighter hand. In yourself you stretch, you are well.
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What, what am I to do with all of this life?
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The poetry is myself.
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Exhaust the little moment soon it dies.
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A writer should get as much education as possible, but just going to school is not enough; if it were, all owners of doctorates would be inspired writers.
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I like the concentration, the crush; I like working with language, as others like working with clay, or notes.
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I am interested in telling my particular truth as I have seen it.
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There are no magics or elves or timely godmothers to guide us. We are lost, must wizard a track through our own screaming weed.
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Exhaust the little moment. Soon it dies. And be it gash or gold it will not come again in this identical guise.
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Reading is important – read between the lines. Don’t swallow everything.
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We are each other’s harvest; we are each other’s business; we are each other’s magnitude and bond.
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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?
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Truth-tellers are not always palatable. There is a preference for candy bars.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS