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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

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

Minority People Reference Worth Yourself
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
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
Abortions will not let you forget. You remember the children you got that you did not get.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Children Death Forget Remember Yourself
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.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Black Identity Minority Worth Yourself
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
There are no magics or elves or timely godmothers to guide us. We are lost, must wizard a track through our own screaming weed.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Guide Lost Magic Scream Time
Goodness begins simply with the fact of life itself.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Beginning Fact Goodness Life Simplicity
The poetry is myself.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Myself Poetry
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
I think it must be lonely to be God. Nobody loves a master. No.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Deep God Lonely Love Master Thinking
I am interested in telling my particular truth as I have seen it.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Interest Myself See Truth
Even if you are not ready for day it cannot always be night.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Day Night Yourself
I am a writer perhaps because I am not a talker.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Myself Talk Writing
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
Writing is a delicious agony.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Delicious One Liner Pain Poet 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!

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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!

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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