black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

When white and black meet today, sometimes there is a ready understanding that there has been an encounter between two human beings. But often there is only, or chiefly, an awareness that Two Colors are in the room.

Gwendolyn Brooks

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.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Acceptance Different Existence Flower Ourselves Reason
Art is a refining and evocative translation of the materials of the world.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Art Material Translation World
I am a writer perhaps because I am not a talker. It has always been hard for me to say exactly what I mean in speech But if I have written a clumsiness, I may erase it.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Hard Mistake Myself Talk Writing
Sometimes you have to deal / Devilishly with drowning men in order to swim them to shore.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Deal Devil Friendship Man Save Yourself
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.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Attention Float Head Poet Yourself
Even if you are not ready for day it cannot always be night.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Day Night Yourself
It is brave to be involved.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Brave Initiative One Liner
As you get older, you find that often the wheat, disentangling itself from the chaff, comes out to meet you.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Food Growth Old Yourself
When I start writing a poem, I don’t think about models or about what anybody else in the world has done.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Poem Start Thinking World Writing
It is brave to be involved. To be not fearful to be unresolved.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Brave Character Fear
Life for my child is simple, and is good.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Children Goodness Life Simplicity
Writing is a delicious agony.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Delicious One Liner Pain Poet Writing
I like the concentration, the crush; I like working with language, as others like working with clay, or notes.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Focus Language Myself Note Work
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.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Blue Body Himself Love Man Rich Right Sweet Water World
Very early in life I became fascinated with the wonders language can achieve. And I began playing with words.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Achievement Beginning Early Fascinate Language Life Play Wonder Word
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.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Black Expression Fight Home Oppression Project Work

When white and black meet today, sometimes there is a ready understanding that there has been an encounter between two human beings. But often there is only, or chiefly, an awareness that Two Colors are in the room.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

When white and black meet today, sometimes there is a ready understanding that there has been an encounter between two human beings. But often there is only, or chiefly, an awareness that Two Colors are in the room.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Gwendolyn Brooks Quotes