black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

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

Gwendolyn Brooks

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.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Black Existence Ideas Myself Race
We are each other’s harvest; we are each other’s business; we are each other’s magnitude and bond.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Bond Business Each Other Friendship Relationship
It is brave to be involved. To be not fearful to be unresolved.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Brave Character Fear
One reason cats are happier than people is that they have no newspapers.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Animal Cat Happiness Media News Reason
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
Reading is important – read between the lines. Don’t swallow everything.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Education Important Patience Reading Slow
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

Black Color Human Room Understand White
This is the urgency: Live! and have your blooming in the noise of the whirlwind.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Live Noise Urgent World Yourself
Books are meat and medicine and flame and flight and flower steel, stitch, cloud and clout, and drumbeats on the air.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Air Book Flame Flower Medicine
No man can give me any word but Wait.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Man Patience Poet Wait Word Writing
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 BROOKS

Fire Flower Independent Language Poet Sweet
Truth-tellers are not always palatable. There is a preference for candy bars.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Chocolate Preference Truth
Good health is a duty to yourself, to your contemporaries, to your inheritors, to the progress of the world.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Goodness Health Inheritance Progress World
Art hurts. Art urges voyages – and it is easier to stay at home.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Art Easy Home Hurt Stay
Do not be afraid of no, Who has so far, so very far to go.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Afraid Journey Path Travel
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

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

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

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Popular Authors

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