Gwendolyn Brooks Quotes

We are each other's harvest; we are each other's business; we are each other's magnitude and bond.

Live not for Battles Won. Live not for The-End-of-the-Song. Live in the along.

Writing is a delicious agony.

One reason that cats are happier than people is that they have no newspapers.

I am a writer perhaps because I am not a talker.

Exhaust the little moment. Soon it dies. And be it gash or gold it will not come Again in this identical disguise.

She was learning to love moments. To love moments for themselves.

Reading is important - read between the lines. Don't swallow everything.

Books are meat and medicine and flame and flight and flower steel, stitch, cloud and clout, and drumbeats on the air.

Poetry is life distilled.

We real cool. We Left school. We Lurk late. We Strike straight. We Sing sin. We Thin gin. We Jazz June. We Die soon.

When you use the term minority or minorities in reference to people, you're telling them that they're less than somebody else.

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

Art hurts. Art urges voyages - and it is easier to stay at home.

What, what am I to do with all of this life?

To be in love Is to touch things with a lighter hand. In yourself you stretch, you are well.

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.

Very early in life I became fascinated with the wonders language can achieve. And I began playing with words.

I shall create! If not a note, a hole./If not an overture, a desecration.

Each body has its art...

Remember, green’s your color. You are Spring.

She was afraid to suggest to him that to most people, nothing "happens." That most people merely live from day to day until they die. That, after he had been dead a year, doubtless fewer than five people would think of him oftener than once a year. That there might even come a year when no one on earth would think of him at all.

It is lonesome, yes. For we are the last of the loud. Nevertheless, live. Conduct your blooming in the noise and whip of the whirlwind.

You are the beautiful half of a golden hurt.

When You Have Forgotten Sunday: The Love Story -- And when you have forgotten the bright bedclothes on a Wednesday and a Saturday, And most especially when you have forgotten Sunday -- When you have forgotten Sunday halves in bed, Or me sitting on the front-room radiator in the limping afternoon Looking off down the long street To nowhere, Hugged by my plain old wrapper of no-expectation And nothing-I-have-to-do and I’m-happy-why? And if-Monday-never-had-to-come— When you have forgotten that, I say, And how you swore, if somebody beeped the bell, And how my heart played hopscotch if the telephone rang; And how we finally went in to Sunday dinner, That is to say, went across the front room floor to the ink-spotted table in the southwest corner To Sunday dinner, which was always chicken and noodles Or chicken and rice And salad and rye bread and tea And chocolate chip cookies -- I say, when you have forgotten that, When you have forgotten my little presentiment That the war would be over before they got to you; And how we finally undressed and whipped out the light and flowed into bed, And lay loose-limbed for a moment in the week-end Bright bedclothes, Then gently folded into each other— When you have, I say, forgotten all that, Then you may tell, Then I may believe You have forgotten me well.

Looking back, it’s embarrassing to recognize the degree to which my intellectual curiosity those first two years of college paralleled the interests of various women I was attempting to get to know: Marx and Marcuse so I had something to say to the long-legged socialist who lived in my dorm; Fanon and Gwendolyn Brooks for the smooth-skinned sociology major who never gave me a second look; Foucault and Woolf for the ethereal bisexual who wore mostly black. As a strategy for picking up girls, my pseudo-intellectualism proved mostly worthless; I found myself in a series of affectionate but chaste friendships.

Surely--But I am very off from that. From surely. From indeed. From the decent arrow that was my clean naivete and my faith. This morning, men deliver wounds and death. They will deliver death and wounds tomorrow. And I doubt all. You. Or a violet.

My Poem is life, and not finished. It shall never be finished. My Poem is life, and can grow.

What she wanted was to donate to the world a good Maud Martha. That was the offering, the bit of art, that could not come from any other. She would polish and hone that.

We real cool. We Left school. We Lurk late. We Strike straight. We Sing sin. We Thin gin. We Jazz June. We Die soon.

But dandelions were what she chiefly saw. Yellow jewels for everyday studding the patched green dress of her back yard. She liked their demure prettiness second to their everydayness; for in that latter quality she thought she saw a picture of herself, and it was comforting to find that what was common could also be a flower.

Sit down. Inhale. Exhale. The gun will wait. The lake will wait. The tall gall in the small seductive vial will wait will wait: will wait a week: will wait through April. You do not have to die this certain day. Death will abide, will pamper your postponement. I assure you death will wait. Death has a lot of time. Death can attend to you tomorrow. Or next week. Death is just down the street; is most obliging neighbor; can meet you any moment. You need not die today. Stay here–through pout or pain or peskyness. Stay here. See what the news is going to be tomorrow. Graves grow no green that you can use. Remember, green’s your color. You are Spring.

When you read a poem, you may not get out of it all that the poet put into it, but you are different from the poet. You’re different from everybody else who is going to read the poem, so you should take from it what you need. Use it personally.

We are things of dry hours and the involuntary plan, Grayed in, and gray.

Wherever life can grow, it will. It will sprout out, and do the best it can. I give you what I have. You don’t get all your questions answered in this world. How many answers shall be found in the developing world of my Poem? I don’t know. Nevertheless I put my Poem, which is my life, into your hands, where it will do the best it can.

To create - a role, a poem, picture, music, a rapture in stone: great. But not for her. What she wanted was to donate to the world a good Maud Martha. That was the offering, the bit of art, that could not come from any other. She would polish and hone that.

If you scream, you're marked "insane." But silence is a place in which to scream!

Hateful things sometimes befall the hateful but the hateful are not rendered lovable thereby.

Books are meat and medicine and flame and flight and flower steel, stitch, cloud and clout, and drumbeats on the air.” ― Gwendolyn Brooks

Truth 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? Though we have wept for him, Though we have prayed All through the night-years— What if we wake one shimmering morning to Hear the fierce hammering Of his firm knuckles Hard on the door? Shall we not shudder?— Shall we not flee Into the shelter, the dear thick shelter Of the familiar Propitious haze? Sweet is it, sweet is it To sleep in the coolness Of snug unawareness. The dark hangs heavily Over the eyes.

Book Power Books feed and cure and chortle and collide. In all this willful world of thud and thump and thunder man’s relevance to books continues to declare. Books are meat and medicine and flame and flight and flower, steel, stitch, and cloud and clout, and drumbeats in the air.

Everybody here is infirm. Everybody here is infirm.

This is the urgency: Live! And have your blooming in the noise of the whirlwind.

If you ask a question, you can't stop there. You must keep going. You can't stop there: World will wave; will be facetious, angry. You can't stop there. You have to keep on going.

my dreams, my works, must wait till after hell I hold my honey and I store my bread In little jars and cabinets of my will. I label clearly, and each latch and lid I bid, Be firm till I return from hell. I am very hungry. I am incomplete. And none can tell when I may dine again. No man can give me any word but Wait, The puny light. I keep eyes pointed in; Hoping that, when the devil days of my hurt Drag out to their last dregs and I resume On such legs as are left me, in such heart As I can manage, remember to go home, My taste will not have turned insensitive To honey and bread old purity could love.

A writer needs to read almost more than his eyes can bear, to know what is going, & what has gone on.... And a writer needs general knowledge. And a writer needs to write. And a writer needs to live richly with eyes open, & heart, too." —

Since a man must bring To music what his mother spanked him for When he was two: bits of forgotten hate, Devotion: whether or not his mattress hurts: The little dream his father humored: the thing His sister did for money: what he ate For breakfast—and for dinner twenty years Ago last autumn: all his skipped desserts.

You do not have to die this certain day. Death will abide, will pamper your postponement. I assure you death will wait. Death has a lot of time. Death can attend to you tomorrow. Or next week. Death is just down the street; is most obliging neighbor; can meet you any moment. You need not die today. Stay here–through pout or pain or peskyness. Stay here. See what the news is going to be tomorrow. Graves grow no green that you can use. Remember, green’s your color. You are Spring.

The dark hangs heavily Over the eyes.

Truth-tellers are not always palatable. There is a preference for candy bars.

Poetry comes out of life.

To say yes is to die A lot or a little.

Poetry is life distilled. –

Tragedy. She considered that word. On the whole, she felt, life was more comedy than tragedy. Nearly everything that happened had its comic element, not too well buried, either. Sooner or later one could find something to laugh at in almost every situation. That was what, in the last analysis, could keep folks from going mad. The truth was, if you got a good Tragedy out of a lifetime, one good, ripping tragedy, thorough, unridiculous, bottom-scraping, not the issue of human stupidity, you were doing, she thought, very well, you were doing very well.

If thou be more than hate or atmosphere Step forth in splendor, mortify our wolves. Or we assume a sovereignty ourselves.

He who was Goodness, Gentleness, And Dignity is free, Translates to public Love Old private charity.

Live and go out. Define and medicate the whirlwind.

Think of sweet and chocolate, Left to folly or to fate, Whom the higher gods forgot, Whom the lower gods berate; Physical and underfed Fancying on the featherbed What was never and is not.

I teach poetry to teens, and I always include a picture of the poet on the handout. I want my readers to see Maya Angelou, Gwendolyn Brooks, Nikki Giovanni. I want them to know what Sandra Cisneros, Natalie Diaz, and Patricia Smith look like. Some will see their reflections looking back at them, others won't. Both are important. Who makes the work is just as important as the work made.

In Little Rock the people sing Sunday hymns like anything, through Sunday pomp and polishing. And after testament and tunes, Some soften Sunday afternoons With lemon tea and Lorna Doones. I forecast And I believe

But the sun was shining, and some of the people in the world had been left alive, and it was doubtful whether the ridiculousness of man would ever completely succeed in destroying the world—or, in fact, the basic equanimity of the least and commonest flower: for would its kind not come up again in the spring? come up, if necessary, among, between, or out of—beastly inconvenient—the smashed corpses lying in strict composure, in that hush infallible and sincere? And was not this something to be thankful for? And in the meantime, while people did live they would be grand, would be glorious and brave, would have nimble hearts that would beat and beat. They would even get up nonsense, through wars, through divorce, through evictions and jiltings and taxes. And, in the meantime, she was going to have another baby. The weather was bidding her bon voyage.

You do not have to die this certain day. Death will abide, will pamper your postponement. I assure you death will wait. Death has a lot of time. Death can attend to you tomorrow. Or next week. Death is just down the street; is most obliging neighbor; can meet you any moment. You need not die today. Stay here–through pout or pain or peskyness. Stay here. See what the news is going to be tomorrow. Graves grow no green that you can use. Remember, green’s your color. You are Spring.

... Before your horror can be sweet. Or proper. Before your grief is other than discreet. The intellectual damn Will nurse your half-hurt. Quickly you are well. But weary. How you yawn, have yet to see Why nothing exhausts you like this sympathy

It is not necessary, says Yvonne, to have every day with him whom to the end thereof you will love. Because it is tasty to remember he is alive, and laughs in somebody else’s room. or is slicing a cucumber, or is buttoning his cuffs, or is signing with his pen and will plan to touch you again.

To say yes is to die A lot or a little. The dead wear capably their wry Enameled emblems. They smell. But that and that they do not altogether yell is all that we know well. It is brave to be involved, To be not fearful to be unresolved. Her new wish was to smile When answers took no airships, walked a while.

She would have liked a lotus, or China asters or the Japanese Iris, or meadow lilies--yes, she would have liked meadow lilies, because the very word meadow made her breathe more deeply, and either fling her arms or want to fling her arms, depending on who was by, rapturously up to whatever was watching in the sky. But dandelions were what she chiefly saw. Yellow jewels for everyday, studding the patched green dress of her back yard. She liked their demure prettiness second to their everydayness; for in that latter quality she thought she saw a picture of herself, and it was comforting to know that was was common could also be a flower.

breath, life after seven decades plus three years is a lot of breathing. seventy three years on this earth is a lot of taking in and giving out, is a life of coming from somewhere and for many a bunch of going nowhere. how do we celebrate a poet who has created music with words for over fifty years, who has showered magic on her people, who has redefined poetry into a black world exactness thereby giving the universe an insight into darkroads? just say she interprets beauty and wants to give life, say she is patient with phoniness and doesn’t mind people calling her gwen or sister. say she sees the genius in our children, is visionary about possibilities, sees as clearly as ray charles and stevie wonder, hears like determined elephants looking for food. say that her touch is fine wood, her memory is like an african roadmap detailing adventure and clarity, yet returning to chicago’s south evans to record the journey. say her voice is majestic and magnetic as she speaks in poetry, rhythms, song and spirited trumpets, say she is dark skinned, melanin rich, small-boned, hurricane-willed, with a mind like a tornado redefining the landscape. life after seven decades plus three years is a lot of breathing. gwendolyn, gwen, sister g has not disappointed our expectations. in the middle of her eldership she brings us vigorous language, memory, illumination. she brings breath. (Quality: Gwendolyn Brooks at 73)

Not that anybody is saying that these people have no trouble. Merely that it is trouble with a gold-flecked beautiful banner. Nobody is saying that these people do not ultimately cease to be. And Sometimes their passings are even more painful than ours. It is just that so often they live till their hair is white. They make excellent corpses, among the expensive flowers. . . .

we are each other’s harvest: we are each other’s business: we are each other’s magnitude and bond.  — GWENDOLYN BROOKS, “PAUL ROBESON” What I want is so simple I almost can’t say it: elementary kindness. Enough to eat, enough to go around. The possibility that kids might one day grow up to be neither the destroyers nor the destroyed.  — BARBARA KINGSOLVER, ANIMAL DREAMS

am an organic Chicagoan,” Gwendolyn Brooks once said under interview. I probably felt that way once.

What mannerisms I present, employ, Are camouflage, and what my mouths remark To word-wall off that broadness of the dark Is pitiful, I am not brave at all.

Old Demonology: '... And so forth. Not that success, for him, is sure, infallible But never has he been afraid to reach. His lesions are legion. But reaching is his rule.' - Gwendolyn Brooks

Life for my child is simple, and is good. He knows his wish. Yes, but that is not all. Because I know mine too. And we both want joy of undeep and unabiding things, Like kicking over a chair or throwing blocks out of a window Or tipping over an icebox pan Or snatching down curtains or fingering an electric outlet Or a journey or a friend or an illegal kiss. No. There is more to it than that. It is that he has never been afraid. Rather, he reaches out and lo the chair falls with a beautiful crash And the blocks fall, down on the people's heads, And the water comes slooshing sloopily out across the floor. And so forth. Not that success, for him, is sure, infallible. But never has he been afraid to reach. His lesions are legion. But reaching is his rule.

Time upholds or overturns The many, tight, and small concerns.

People who have no children can be hard: Attain a mail of ice and insolence:

It was Mabbie without the grammar school gates. And Mabbie was all of seven. And Mabbie was cut from a chocolate bar. And Mabbie thought life was heaven.

I hold my honey and I store my bread In little jars and cabinets of my will. I label clearly, and each latch and lid I bid, Be firm till I return from hell. I am very hungry. I am incomplete. And none can tell when I may dine again.

Her creamy child kissed by the black maid! square on the mouth! World yelled, world writhed, world turned to light and rolled Into her kitchen, nearly knocked her down.

Well, life has been a baffled vehicle And baffling. But she fights, and Has fought, according to her lights and The lenience of her whirling-place. She fights with semi-folded arms, Her strong bag, and the stiff Frost of her face (that challenges "When" and "If.") And altogether she does Rather Well.