What, what am I to do with all of this life?
GWENDOLYN BROOKSWhat, what am I to do with all of this life?
GWENDOLYN BROOKSThis is the urgency: Live! and have your blooming in the noise of the whirlwind.
GWENDOLYN BROOKSAs you get older, you find that often the wheat, disentangling itself from the chaff, comes out to meet you.
GWENDOLYN BROOKSIt is brave to be involved. To be not fearful to be unresolved.
GWENDOLYN BROOKSNo man can give me any word but Wait.
GWENDOLYN BROOKSThere are no magics or elves or timely godmothers to guide us. We are lost, must wizard a track through our own screaming weed.
GWENDOLYN BROOKSIt frightens me to realize that, if I had died before the age of fifty, I would have died a ‘Negro’ fraction.
GWENDOLYN BROOKSOne reason cats are happier than people is that they have no newspapers.
GWENDOLYN BROOKSPeople are so in need, in need of help. People want so much that they do not know.
GWENDOLYN BROOKSBooks are meat and medicine and flame and flight and flower steel, stitch, cloud and clout, and drumbeats on the air.
GWENDOLYN BROOKSDon’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 BROOKSVery early in life I became fascinated with the wonders language can achieve. And I began playing with words.
GWENDOLYN BROOKSDo not be afraid of no, Who has so far, so very far to go.
GWENDOLYN BROOKSBe yourself. Don’t imitate other poets. You are as important as they are.
GWENDOLYN BROOKSLife must be aromatic. There must be scent, somehow there must be some.
GWENDOLYN BROOKSThe music is in minors.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS