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My last defense / Is the present tense.

Gwendolyn Brooks

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Gwendolyn Brooks
Age: 83 †
Born: 1917
Born: June 7
Died: 2000
Died: December 3
Novelist
Poet
Teacher
Writer
Topeka
Kansas
Gwendolyn Elizabeth Brooks
Last
Moments
Tense
Defense
Present
Lasts

More quotes by Gwendolyn Brooks

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Goodness begins simply with the fact of life itself.
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at a certain moment in social proceedings, I am on FIRE to leave: I have a leaving-FIT.
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Each body has its art.
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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.
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We are each other's magnitude and bond.
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Art is a refining and evocative translation of the materials of the world.
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Do not be afraid of no, Who has so far, so very far to go.
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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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And if sun comes / How shall we greet him? / Shall we not dread him, / Shall we not fear him / After so lengthy a / Session with shade?
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A writer should get as much education as possible, but just going to school is not enough if it were, all owners of doctorates would be inspired writers.
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What 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.
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I think it must be lonely to be God. Nobody loves a master. No.
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I who have gone the gamut from an almost angry rejection of my dark skin by some of my brainwashed brothers and sisters to a surprised queenhood in the new Black sunam qualified to enter at least the kindergarten of new consciousness now... I have hopes for myself.
Gwendolyn Brooks
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It is brave to be involved
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Art hurts. Art urges voyages - and it is easier to stay at home.
Gwendolyn Brooks
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Reading is important - read between the lines. Don't swallow everything.
Gwendolyn Brooks
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I am an ordinary human being who is impelled to write poetry. ... I still do feel that a poet has a duty to words, and that words can do wonderful things, and it's too bad to just let them lie there without doing anything with and for them.
Gwendolyn Brooks
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Writing is a delicious agony.
Gwendolyn Brooks
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I've always thought of myself as a reporter. When people ask why I don't stop writing, I say, `Look at what's happening in this world. Every day there's something exciting or disturbing to write about.’ With all that's going on, how could I stop?
Gwendolyn Brooks
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Even if you are not ready for day it cannot always be night.
Gwendolyn Brooks