Gwendolyn Brooks Quotes

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.

When I start writing a poem, I don't think about models or about what anybody else in the world has done.

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.

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.

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

Already you're on Page 8.

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

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.

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 am a writer perhaps because I am not a talker.

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

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

Each body has its art...

I am interested in telling my particular truth as I have seen it.

Somebody muffed it?? Somebody wanted to joke.