Quotes from Gwendolyn Brooks

No man can give me any word but Wait.

There can be no whiter whiteness than this one: An insurance man's shirt on its morning run.

Poetry is life distilled.

The poetry is myself.

I think it must be lonely to be God. Nobody loves a master. No.

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?

Good health is a duty to yourself, to your contemporaries, to your inheritors, to the progress of the world.

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

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.

Do not desire to fit in. Desire to oblige yourselves to lead.

Exhaust the little moment. Soon it dies. And be it gash or gold it will not come again in this identical guise.

This is the urgency: Live! and have your blooming in the noise of the whirlwind.

Goodness begins simply with the fact of life itself.

What, what am I to do with all of this life?

First fight. Then fiddle.

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

I think there are things for all of us to do as long as we're here and we're healthy.

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

Life must be aromatic. There must be scent, somehow there must be some.

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.

Life for my child is simple, and is good.

I swear to keep the dead upon my mind, / Disdain for all time to be overglad.

Already I am no longer looked at with lechery or love.

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