black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

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

I like the concentration, the crush; I like working with language, as others like working with clay, or notes.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Focus Language Myself Note Work
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
It is brave to be involved. To be not fearful to be unresolved.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Brave Character Fear
Abortions will not let you forget. You remember the children you got that you did not get.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Children Death Forget Remember Yourself
Art is a refining and evocative translation of the materials of the world.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Art Material Translation World
Truth-tellers are not always palatable. There is a preference for candy bars.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Chocolate Preference Truth
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
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
I am a writer perhaps because I am not a talker.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Myself Talk Writing
As you get older, you find that often the wheat, disentangling itself from the chaff, comes out to meet you.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Food Growth Old Yourself
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.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Challenge Enjoyment Experience Feeling Publish Writing
It is brave to be involved.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Brave Initiative One Liner
Be yourself. Don’t imitate other poets. You are as important as they are.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Be Yourself Imitation Important Poet Yourself
I know that the Black emphasis must be not against white but FOR Black.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

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

Deep God Lonely Love Master Thinking
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

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Gwendolyn Brooks Quotes