Quotes from Gwendolyn Brooks

I've always thought of myself as a reporter.

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?

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

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

To be in love Is to touch things with a lighter hand. In yourself you stretch, you are well.

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

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.

People are so in need, in need of help. People want so much that they do not know.

We are each other's harvest; we are each other's business; we are each other's magnitude and bond.

We are each other's magnitude and bond.

Be careful what you swallow. Chew!

... sometimes you have to deal / Devilishly with drowning men in order to swim them to shore.

The brawniest will not beat back the storm Nor the heaviest haul your little boy from harm.

Abortions will not let you forget. You remember the children you got that you did not get, The damp small pulps with a little or with no hair, The singers and workers that never handled the air. You will never neglect or beat Them, or silence or buy with a sweet. You will never wind up the sucking-thumb Or scuttle off ghosts that come.

He ran like a mad thing into the night And the words in his mouth were stinking. By the time he had hurt his first white man He was no longer thinking. By the time he had hurt his fourth white man Rudolph Reed was dead. His neighbors gathered and kicked his corpse.

That time we all heard it, cool and clear, cutting across the hot grit of the day. The major Voice. The adult Voice forgoing Rolling River, forgoing tearful tale of bale and barge and other symptoms of an old despond. Warning, in music-words devout and large, that we are each other's harvest: we are each other's business: we are each other's magnitude and bond.

Believe me, I loved you all. Believe me, I knew you, though faintly, and I loved, I loved you All.

What shall I say, how is the truth to be said? You were born, you had body, you died. It is just that you never giggled or planned or cried.

Come: there shall be such islanding from grief, And small communion with the master shore. Twang they. And I incline this ear to tin, Consult a dual dilemma. Whether to dry In humming pallor or to leap and die. Somebody muffed it?? Somebody wanted to joke.

It is a real chill out. The fall crisp comes I am aware there is winter to heed. There is no warm house That is fitted with my need.

It is a real chill out, The genuine thing. I am not deceived, I do not think it is still summer Because sun stays and birds continue to sing.

Already I am no longer looked at with lechery or love. My daughters and sons have put me away with marbles and dolls, Are gone from the house. My husband and lovers are pleasant or somewhat polite And night is night.

Coherent Counsel! Good man. Require of us our terribly excluded blue. Constrain, repair a ripped, revolted land. Put hand in hand land over. Reprove the abler droughts and manias of the day and a felicity entreat. Love. Complete your pledges, reinforce your aides, renew stance, testament.

The good man. He is still enhancer, renouncer. In the time of detachment, in the time of the vivid heather and affectionate evil, in the time of oral grave grave legalities of hate - all real walks our prime registered reproach and seal. Our successful moral. The good man.