Gwendolyn Brooks > Quotes

“We are each other's harvest; we are each other's business; we are each other's magnitude and bond.”
― Gwendolyn Brooks

“Live not for Battles Won.
Live not for The-End-of-the-Song.
Live in the along.”
― Gwendolyn Brooks, Report from Part One

“Writing is a delicious agony.”
― Gwendolyn Brooks

“One reason that cats are happier than people is that they have no newspapers.”
― Gwendolyn Brooks, In the Mecca

“I am a writer perhaps because I am not a talker.”
― Gwendolyn Brooks

“Exhaust the little moment. Soon it dies.
And be it gash or gold it will not come
Again in this identical disguise.”
― Gwendolyn Brooks, Annie Allen

“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.”
― Gwendolyn Brooks, The Essential Gwendolyn Brooks:

“She was learning to love moments. To love moments for themselves. ”
― Gwendolyn Brooks

“Reading is important - read between the lines. Don't swallow everything.”
― Gwendolyn Brooks

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

“Poetry is life distilled.”
― Gwendolyn Brooks

“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, Selected Poems

“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

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

“Art hurts. Art urges voyages - and it is easier to stay at home.”
― Gwendolyn Brooks

“What, what am I to do with all of this life?”
― Gwendolyn Brooks, Maud Martha

“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, Selected Poems

“ To be in love
Is to touch things with a lighter hand.

In yourself you stretch, you are well.”
― Gwendolyn Brooks, Selected Poems

“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.”
― Gwendolyn Brooks, Maud Martha

“Very early in life I became fascinated with the wonders language can achieve. And I began playing with words.”
― Gwendolyn Brooks

“I shall create! If not a note, a hole./If not an overture, a desecration.”
― Gwendolyn Brooks

“Each body has its art...”
― Gwendolyn Brooks

“Remember, green’s your color. You are Spring.”
― Gwendolyn Brooks

“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.”
― Gwendolyn Brooks

“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.”
― Gwendolyn Brooks, In the Mecca

“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.”
― Gwendolyn Brooks, The Essential Gwendolyn Brooks:

“You are the beautiful half
of a golden hurt.”
― 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.”
― Gwendolyn Brooks, Blacks

“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.”
― Gwendolyn Brooks, Maud Martha

“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.”
― Gwendolyn Brooks, Selected Poems