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Gwendolyn Brooks
41 quotes
“It is brave to be involved To be not fearful to be unresolved.”
Gwendolyn Brooks (1917–2000) first seen 1949 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: do not be afraid of no" from Annie Allen (1949)
“Exhaust the little moment. Soon it dies. And be it gash or gold it will not come Again in this identical guise.”
Gwendolyn Brooks (1917–2000) first seen 1949 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: exhaust the little moment" from Annie Allen (1949)
“We real cool. We Left school. We Lurk late. We Strike straight. We Sing sin. We Thin gin. We Jazz June. We Die soon.”
Gwendolyn Brooks (1917–2000) first seen 1960 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: We ReaI CooI" , The Bean Eaters (1960)
“Art hurts. Art urges voyages— and it is easier to stay at home.”
Gwendolyn Brooks (1917–2000) first seen 1968 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Chicago Picasso" (1968)
“When I start writing a poem, I don't think about models or about what anybody else in the world has done.”
Gwendolyn Brooks (1917–2000) first seen 1970 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: An Interview with Gwendolyn Brooks", Contemporary Literature 11:1 (Winter 1970)
“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 (1917–2000) first seen 1972 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Report From Part One (1972)
“As you get older, you find that often the wheat, disentangling itself from the chaff, comes out to meet you.”
Gwendolyn Brooks (1917–2000) first seen 1972 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Report From Part One (1972)
“Art is a refining and evocative translation of the materials of the world.”
Gwendolyn Brooks (1917–2000) first seen 1975 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Black Poetry Writing (1975)
“Truth-tellers are not always palatable. There is a preference for candy bars.”
Gwendolyn Brooks (1917–2000) first seen 1988 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Gottschalk and the Grande Tarantelle (1988)
“Be careful what you swallow. Chew!”
Gwendolyn Brooks (1917–2000) first seen 1995 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Advice to graduates, Buena Vista University Graduation (1995)
“I am a writer perhaps because I am not a talker.”
Gwendolyn Brooks (1917–2000) first seen 1995 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: My Soul Looks Back, 'Less I Forget (1995) by Dorothy Winbush Riley
“I am interested in telling my particular truth as I have seen it.”
Gwendolyn Brooks (1917–2000) first seen 2000 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted in her obituary in The Guardian (7 December 2000)
“To be in love Is to touch with a lighter hand. In yourself you stretch, you are well.”
Gwendolyn Brooks (1917–2000) said by 2000 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He is not there but You know you are tasting together The winter, or a light spring weather. His hand to take your hand is overmuch. Too much too bear.”
Gwendolyn Brooks (1917–2000) said by 2000 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I shall not sing a May song. A May song should be gay. I'll wait until November And sing a song of gray.”
Gwendolyn Brooks (1917–2000) said by 2000 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And all the little people Will stare at me and say, "That is the Crazy Woman Who would not sing in May.”
Gwendolyn Brooks (1917–2000) said by 2000 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Gwendolyn Brooks (1917–2000) said by 2000 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Already you're on Page 8.”
Gwendolyn Brooks (1917–2000) said by 2000 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“consider the big fists breaking your little bones, or consider the vague bureaucrats stumbling, fumbling through Paper.”
Gwendolyn Brooks (1917–2000) said by 2000 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Is earnest enough, may earnest attract or lead to light; Is light enough, if hands in clumsy frenzy, flimsy whimsically, enlist; Is light enough when this bewilderment crying against the dark shuts down the shades? Dilute confusion. Find and explode our mist.”
Gwendolyn Brooks (1917–2000) said by 2000 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Gwendolyn Brooks (1917–2000) said by 2000 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Abortions will not let you forget. You remember the children you got that you did not get, The damp small pulps with a little or with no hair, The singers and workers that never handled the air. You will never neglect or beat Them, or silence or buy with a sweet. You will never wind up the sucking-thumb Or scuttle off ghosts that come.”
Gwendolyn Brooks (1917–2000) said by 2000 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have heard in the voices of the wind the voices of my dim killed children. I have contracted. I have eased My dim dears at the breasts they could never suck. I have said, Sweets, if I sinned, if I seized Your luck And your lives from your unfinished reach, If I stole your births and your names, Your straight baby tears and your games, Your stilted or lovely loves, your tumults, your marriages, aches, and your deaths, If I poisoned the beginnings of your breaths, Believe that even in my deliberateness I was not deliberate.”
Gwendolyn Brooks (1917–2000) said by 2000 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What shall I say, how is the truth to be said? You were born, you had body, you died. It is just that you never giggled or planned or cried.”
Gwendolyn Brooks (1917–2000) said by 2000 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Believe me, I loved you all. Believe me, I knew you, though faintly, and I loved, I loved you All.”
Gwendolyn Brooks (1917–2000) said by 2000 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I pass you my Poem. A poem doesn’t do everything for you. You are supposed to go on with your thinking. You are supposed to enrich the other person’s poem with your extensions, your uniquely personal understandings, thus making the poem serve you.”
Gwendolyn Brooks (1917–2000) said by 2000 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I pass you my Poem! — to tell you we are all vulnerable — the midget, the Mighty, the richest, the poor. Men, women, children, and trees. I am vulnerable.”
Gwendolyn Brooks (1917–2000) said by 2000 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My Poem is life, and not finished. It shall never be finished. My Poem is life, and can grow. 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.”
Gwendolyn Brooks (1917–2000) said by 2000 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Rudolph Reed was oaken. His wife was oaken too. And his two good girls and his good little man Oakened as they grew.”
Gwendolyn Brooks (1917–2000) said by 2000 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Nary a grin grinned Rudolph Reed, Nary a curse cursed he, But moved in his House. With his dark little wife, And his dark little children three.”
Gwendolyn Brooks (1917–2000) said by 2000 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The first night, a rock, big as two fists. The second, a rock big as three. But nary a curse cursed Rudolph Reed. (Though oaken as man could be.) The third night, a silvery ring of glass. Patience arched to endure, But he looked, and lo! small Mabel's blood Was staining her gaze so pure.”
Gwendolyn Brooks (1917–2000) said by 2000 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He ran like a mad thing into the night And the words in his mouth were stinking. By the time he had hurt his first white man He was no longer thinking. By the time he had hurt his fourth white man Rudolph Reed was dead. His neighbors gathered and kicked his corpse. "Nigger—" his neighbors said.”
Gwendolyn Brooks (1917–2000) said by 2000 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Small Mabel whimpered all night long, For calling herself the cause. Her oak-eyed mother did no thing But change the bloody gauze.”
Gwendolyn Brooks (1917–2000) said by 2000 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The good man. He is still enhancer, renouncer. In the time of detachment, in the time of the vivid heather and affectionate evil, in the time of oral grave grave legalities of hate - all real walks our prime registered reproach and seal. Our successful moral. The good man.”
Gwendolyn Brooks (1917–2000) said by 2000 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Coherent Counsel! Good man. Require of us our terribly excluded blue. Constrain, repair a ripped, revolted land. Put hand in hand land over. Reprove the abler droughts and manias of the day and a felicity entreat. Love. Complete your pledges, reinforce your aides, renew stance, testament.”
Gwendolyn Brooks (1917–2000) said by 2000 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Already I am no longer looked at with lechery or love. My daughters and sons have put me away with marbles and dolls, Are gone from the house. My husband and lovers are pleasant or somewhat polite And night is night.”
Gwendolyn Brooks (1917–2000) said by 2000 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is a real chill out, The genuine thing. I am not deceived, I do not think it is still summer Because sun stays and birds continue to sing.”
Gwendolyn Brooks (1917–2000) said by 2000 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is a real chill out. The fall crisp comes I am aware there is winter to heed. There is no warm house That is fitted with my need.”
Gwendolyn Brooks (1917–2000) said by 2000 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Come: there shall be such islanding from grief, And small communion with the master shore. Twang they. And I incline this ear to tin, Consult a dual dilemma. Whether to dry In humming pallor or to leap and die.”
Gwendolyn Brooks (1917–2000) said by 2000 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Somebody muffed it?? Somebody wanted to joke.”
Gwendolyn Brooks (1917–2000) said by 2000 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“That time we all heard it, cool and clear, cutting across the hot grit of the day. The major Voice. The adult Voice forgoing Rolling River, forgoing tearful tale of bale and barge and other symptoms of an old despond. Warning, in music-words devout and large, that we are each other's harvest: we are each other's business: we are each other's magnitude and bond.”
Gwendolyn Brooks (1917–2000) said by 2000 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source