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.”

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

“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.”

“Poetry is life distilled.”

“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.”

“First fight. Then fiddle.”

“I've always thought of myself as a reporter.”

“Surely--But I am very off from that.From surely. From indeed. From the decent arrowthat 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.”

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

“I felt that I had to write. Even if I had never been published, I knew that I would go on writing, enjoying it and experiencing the challenge.”

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

“Exhaust the little moment. Soon it dies.And be it gash or gold it will not comeAgain in this identical disguise.”

“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.”

“Look at what's happening in this world. Every day there's something exciting or disturbing to write about. With all that's going on, how could I stop?”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Say to them,say to the down-keepers,the sun-slappers,the self-soilers,the harmony-hushers,"Even if you are not ready for dayit 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.”