Writing is a delicious agony.
GWENDOLYN BROOKSWriting is a delicious agony.
GWENDOLYN BROOKSArt is a refining and evocative translation of the materials of the world.
GWENDOLYN BROOKSLife must be aromatic. There must be scent, somehow there must be some.
GWENDOLYN BROOKSLife for my child is simple, and is good.
GWENDOLYN BROOKSEven if you are not ready for day it cannot always be night.
GWENDOLYN BROOKSAbortions will not let you forget. You remember the children you got that you did not get.
GWENDOLYN BROOKSWhen 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 BROOKSBe yourself. Don’t imitate other poets. You are as important as they are.
GWENDOLYN BROOKSShe was learning to love moments. To love moments for themselves.
GWENDOLYN BROOKSI know that the Black emphasis must be not against white but FOR Black.
GWENDOLYN BROOKSThere can be no whiter whiteness than this one: An insurance man’s shirt on its morning run.
GWENDOLYN BROOKSWe real cool. We Left school. We Lurk late. We Strike straight. We Sing sin. We Thin gin. We Jazz June. We Die soon.
GWENDOLYN BROOKSThe music is in minors.
GWENDOLYN BROOKSNo man can give me any word but Wait.
GWENDOLYN BROOKSPoetry is life distilled.
GWENDOLYN BROOKSWhat 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