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Be yourself. Don't imitate other poets. You are as important as they are.

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
Imitate
Poets
Poet
Important

More quotes by Gwendolyn Brooks

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Very early in life I became fascinated with the wonders language can achieve. And I began playing with words.
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My last defense / Is the present tense.
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Do not be afraid of no, Who has so far, so very far to go.
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Each body has its art.
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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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Reading is important - read between the lines. Don't swallow everything.
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The poetry is myself.
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This is the urgency: Live! and have your blooming in the noise of the whirlwind.
Gwendolyn Brooks
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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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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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It frightens me to realize that, if I had died before the age of fifty, I would have died a 'Negro' fraction.
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When I start writing a poem, I don't think about models or about what anybody else in the world has done.
Gwendolyn Brooks
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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
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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.
Gwendolyn Brooks
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She was learning to love moments. To love moments for themselves.
Gwendolyn Brooks
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Exhaust the little moment. Soon it dies. And be it gash or gold it will not come again in this identical guise.
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It is brave to be involved
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Be careful what you swallow. Chew!
Gwendolyn Brooks
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Even if you are not ready for day it cannot always be night.
Gwendolyn Brooks
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Goodness begins simply with the fact of life itself.
Gwendolyn Brooks