Gwendolyn Brooks Quotes

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

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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.

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

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.

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

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.

"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."

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

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

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

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

Somebody muffed it?? Somebody wanted to joke.

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

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.