Quote

The poetry is myself.

Gwendolyn Brooks

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Gwendolyn Brooks
Age: 83 †
Born: 1917
Born: June 7
Died: 2000
Died: December 3
Novelist
Poet
Teacher
Writer
Topeka
Kansas
Gwendolyn Elizabeth Brooks
Poetry

More quotes by Gwendolyn Brooks

Image
It frightens me to realize that, if I had died before the age of fifty, I would have died a 'Negro' fraction.
Gwendolyn Brooks
Image
When I start writing a poem, I don't think about models or about what anybody else in the world has done.
Gwendolyn Brooks
Image
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
Image
I think there are things for all of us to do as long as we're here and we're healthy.
Gwendolyn Brooks
Image
We are each other's magnitude and bond.
Gwendolyn Brooks
Image
It is brave to be involved
Gwendolyn Brooks
Image
Be yourself. Don't imitate other poets. You are as important as they are.
Gwendolyn Brooks
Image
Exhaust the little moment / Soon it dies.
Gwendolyn Brooks
Image
This is the urgency: Live! and have your blooming in the noise of the whirlwind.
Gwendolyn Brooks
Image
Don'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 Brooks
Image
When you love a man, he becomes more than a body. His physical limbs expand, and his outline recedes, vanishes. He is rich and sweet and right. He is part of the world, the atmosphere, the blue sky and the blue water.
Gwendolyn Brooks
Image
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
Image
at a certain moment in social proceedings, I am on FIRE to leave: I have a leaving-FIT.
Gwendolyn Brooks
Image
Be careful what you swallow. Chew!
Gwendolyn Brooks
Image
My last defense / Is the present tense.
Gwendolyn Brooks
Image
As you get older, you find that often the wheat, disentangling itself from the chaff, comes out to meet you.
Gwendolyn Brooks
Image
Say to them, say to the down-keepers, the sun-slappers, the self-soilers, the harmony-hushers, Even if you are not ready for day it cannot always be night. You will be right. For that is the hard home-run. Live not for battles won. Live not for the-end-of-the-song. Live in the along.
Gwendolyn Brooks
Image
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
Image
Each body has its art.
Gwendolyn Brooks
Image
Truth-tellers are not always palatable. There is a preference for candy bars.
Gwendolyn Brooks