I swear to keep the dead upon my mind, / Disdain for all time to be overglad.
GWENDOLYN BROOKSThe 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!
More Gwendolyn Brooks Quotes
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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.
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No man can give me any word but Wait.
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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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Be yourself. Don’t imitate other poets. You are as important as they are.
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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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I believe we should all know each other, we human carriers of so many pleasurable differences. To not know is to doubt, to shrink from, sidestep or destroy.
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Do not be afraid of no, Who has so far, so very far to go.
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I think it must be lonely to be God. Nobody loves a master. No.
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It is brave to be involved. To be not fearful to be unresolved.
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I am a writer perhaps because I am not a talker.
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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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When I start writing a poem, I don’t think about models or about what anybody else in the world has done.
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The music is in minors.
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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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I am interested in telling my particular truth as I have seen it.
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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!
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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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Each body has its art.
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Books are meat and medicine and flame and flight and flower steel, stitch, cloud and clout, and drumbeats on the air.
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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.
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Art is a refining and evocative translation of the materials of the world.
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Art hurts. Art urges voyages – and it is easier to stay at home.
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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.
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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.
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She was learning to love moments. To love moments for themselves.
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There can be no whiter whiteness than this one: An insurance man’s shirt on its morning run.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS