$Gwendolyn Brooks Quote - It frightens me to realize that, if I had died before the age of fifty, I would have died a ‘Negro’ fraction.$
$Gwendolyn Brooks Quote - It frightens me to realize that, if I had died before the age of fifty, I would have died a ‘Negro’ fraction.$
$Gwendolyn Brooks Quote - It frightens me to realize that, if I had died before the age of fifty, I would have died a ‘Negro’ fraction.$
$Gwendolyn Brooks Quote - It frightens me to realize that, if I had died before the age of fifty, I would have died a ‘Negro’ fraction.$
$Gwendolyn Brooks Quote - It frightens me to realize that, if I had died before the age of fifty, I would have died a ‘Negro’ fraction.$
$Gwendolyn Brooks Quote - It frightens me to realize that, if I had died before the age of fifty, I would have died a ‘Negro’ fraction.$

black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

It frightens me to realize that, if I had died before the age of fifty, I would have died a ‘Negro’ fraction.

Gwendolyn Brooks

Beware the easy griefs / that fool and fuel nothing.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Easy Fools Fuel Grief
With melted opals for my milk, Pearl-leaf for my cracker.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Milk Myself
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
No man can give me any word but Wait.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Man Patience Poet Wait Word Writing
This is the urgency: Live! and have your blooming in the noise of the whirlwind.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Live Noise Urgent World Yourself
I swear to keep the dead upon my mind, / Disdain for all time to be overglad.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Death Mindset Myself Remember Time
Art hurts. Art urges voyages – and it is easier to stay at home.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Art Easy Home Hurt Stay
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
There can be no whiter whiteness than this one: An insurance man’s shirt on its morning run.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Insurance Man Oneself White
Goodness begins simply with the fact of life itself.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Beginning Fact Goodness Life Simplicity
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
I am a writer perhaps because I am not a talker.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Myself Talk Writing
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
Books are meat and medicine and flame and flight and flower steel, stitch, cloud and clout, and drumbeats on the air.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Air Book Flame Flower Medicine
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
Truth-tellers are not always palatable. There is a preference for candy bars.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Chocolate Preference Truth