85 Gwendolyn Brooks Quotes From The Inspiring Author
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Gwendolyn Brooks is a legendary African-American writer and poet.
The Annie Allen poet has written words that have now become notable quotes. The American author is considered an important figure in the literature community.
Gwendolyn Brooks has also won the Pulitzer prize for poetry. The poet has quoted the hardships of the people of her community. 'A Street in Bronzeville' and 'Annie Allen' are some of her most famous works. It's very interesting to read through her work and analyze what her words truly mean.
We have compiled some of the best Gwendolyn Brooks famous quotes, quotes about poetry, and, of course, Gwendolyn Brooks quotes about validation. We have compiled the best Gwendolyn Brooks quotes from the American poet and author.
If you like this article, check out these ['La La Land' quotes] and Lady Macbeth quotes.
Best Gwendolyn Brooks Quotes
Here are some of the best Gwendolyn Brooks quotes from the Pulitzer prize writer’s books and poems. These poetry quotes are very insightful.
1. “Reading is important - read between the lines. Don't swallow everything.”
- Gwendolyn Brooks.
2. “When I start writing a poem, I don't think about models or about what anybody else in the world has done.”
- Gwendolyn Brooks.
3. “Truth-tellers are not always palatable. There is a preference for candy bars.”
- Gwendolyn Brooks.
4. “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.”
- Gwendolyn Brooks.
5. “Once chosen, our cornering will determine The message of any star and darkness we encounter.”
- Gwendolyn Brooks.
6. “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.”
- Gwendolyn Brooks.
7. “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.”
- Gwendolyn Brooks.
8. “Writing is a delicious agony.”
- Gwendolyn Brooks.
9. “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.”
- Gwendolyn Brooks.
10. “Books are meat and medicine and flame and flight and flower steel, stitch, cloud and clout, and drumbeats on the air.”
- Gwendolyn Brooks.
11. “She was learning to love moments. To love moments for themselves.”
- Gwendolyn Brooks.
12. “One reason that cats are happier than people is that they have no newspapers.”
- Gwendolyn Brooks.
13. “It is brave to be involved. To be not fearful to be unresolved.”
- Gwendolyn Brooks.
14. “Life must be aromatic. There must be scent, somehow there must be some.”
- Gwendolyn Brooks.
15. “My last defense, is the present tense.”
- Gwendolyn Brooks.
16. “Do not desire to fit in. Desire to oblige yourselves to lead.”
- Gwendolyn Brooks.
Pulitzer Prize Winner Gwendolyn Brooks Quotes
The greatest Gwendolyn Brooks quotes from the African American author and poet.
17. “Every day there's something exciting or disturbing to write about. With all that's going on, how could I stop?”
- Gwendolyn Brooks.
18. “I am an ordinary human being who is impelled to write poetry.”
- Gwendolyn Brooks.
19. “Very early in life I became fascinated with the wonders language can achieve. And I began playing with words.”
- Gwendolyn Brooks.
20. “Live not for battles won. Live not for The-End-of-the-Song. Live in the along.”
- Gwendolyn Brooks.
21. “What, what am I to do with all of this life?”
- Gwendolyn Brooks.
22. “I am a writer perhaps because I am not a talker.”
- Gwendolyn Brooks.
23. “Art hurts. Art urges voyages - and it is easier to stay at home.”
- Gwendolyn Brooks.
24. “When you use the term minority or minorities in reference to people, you're telling them that they're less than somebody else.”
- Gwendolyn Brooks.
25. “Poetry is life distilled.”
- Gwendolyn Brooks.
26. “A cry of bitter dead men who will never attend a gentle maker of musical joy.”
- Gwendolyn Brooks.
27. “Remedial fears. Muscular tears.”
- Gwendolyn Brooks.
28. “Nobody is saying that these people do not ultimately cease to be. And sometimes their passings are even more painful than ours…”
- Gwendolyn Brooks.
29. “Young, and so thin, and so straight. So straight! as if nothing could ever bend her.…”
- Gwendolyn Brooks.
30. “You are the beautiful half of a golden hurt.”
- Gwendolyn Brooks.
31. “People are so in need, in need of help. People want so much that they do not know.”
- Gwendolyn Brooks.
32. “As you get older, you find that often the wheat, disentangling itself from the chaff, comes out to meet you.”
- Gwendolyn Brooks.
33. “I am interested in telling my particular truth as I have seen it.”
- Gwendolyn Brooks.
34. “Goodness begins simply with the fact of life itself.”
- Gwendolyn Brooks.
35. “Good health is a duty to yourself, to your contemporaries, to your inheritors, to the progress of the world.”
- Gwendolyn Brooks.
36. “I don't like the idea of the black race being diluted out of existence. I like the idea of all of us being here.”
- Gwendolyn Brooks.
37. “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.”
- Gwendolyn Brooks.
38. “Sweet is it, sweet is it To sleep in the coolness Of snug unawareness. The dark hangs heavily Over the eyes.”
- Gwendolyn Brooks.
39. “Each body has its art…”
- Gwendolyn Brooks.
Gwendolyn Brooks Quotes From Her Poetry
Here are some Gwendolyn Brooks quotes from the Pulitzer prize poet. You should spend some time understanding Gwendolyn Brooks quotes and what they mean.
40. “Exhaust the little moment. Soon it dies. And be it gash or gold it will not come again in this identical disguise.”
- Gwendolyn Brooks, ‘Annie Allen’.
41. “I shall create! If not a note, a hole. / If not an overture, a desecration.”
- Gwendolyn Brooks.
42. “Graves grow no green that you can use. Remember, green’s your color. You are Spring.”
- Gwendolyn Brooks.
43. “I believe we should all know each other, we human carriers of so many pleasurable differences.”
- Gwendolyn Brooks.
44. “A poem rarely comes whole and completely dressed. As a rule, it comes in bits and pieces.”
- Gwendolyn Brooks.
45. “We don’t ask a flower any special reason for its existence. We just look at it and are able to accept it as being something different from ourselves.”
- Gwendolyn Brooks.
46. “Poets oblige themselves to see. Poetry is siren, prose is survey. I keep telling children: Poetry comes out of life.”
- Gwendolyn Brooks.
47. “I enjoyed reading poetry and I tried to write it when I was about seven, at the time that I first tried to put rhymes together.”
- Gwendolyn Brooks.
48. “I’ve written so many poems that I believe some of them will stay alive.”
- Gwendolyn Brooks.
49. “And if sun comes / How shall we greet him? / Shall we not dread him, / Shall we not fear him.”
- Gwendolyn Brooks, ‘Annie Allen’.
50. “... beware the easy griefs / that fool and fuel nothing.”
- Gwendolyn Brooks.
51. “I tell poets that when a line just floats into your head, don't pay attention 'cause it probably has floated into somebody else's head.”
- Gwendolyn Brooks.
52. “I know that the Black emphasis must be not against white but for Black.”
- Gwendolyn Brooks.
53. “The poetry is myself.”
- Gwendolyn Brooks.
54. “There are no magics or elves / Or timely godmothers to guide us. We are lost, must / Wizard a track through our own screaming weed.”
- Gwendolyn Brooks, ‘Annie Allen’.
Popular Gwendolyn Brooks Quotes
Here are some famous Gwendolyn Brooks quotes from the African American author and poet.
55. “Be yourself. Don't imitate other poets. You are as important as they are.”
- Gwendolyn Brooks.
56. “Be careful what you swallow. Chew!”
- Gwendolyn Brooks.
57. “Even if you are not ready for day, it cannot always be night.”
- Gwendolyn Brooks.
58. “Life for my child is simple, and is good.”
- Gwendolyn Brooks.
59. “I think it must be lonely to be God. Nobody loves a master. No.”
- Gwendolyn Brooks.
60. “I like the concentration, the crush; I like working with language, as others like working with clay, or notes.”
- Gwendolyn Brooks.
61. “My Poem is life, and not finished. It shall never be finished. My Poem is life, and can grow.”
- Gwendolyn Brooks.
62. “I think there are things for all of us to do as long as we're here and we're healthy.”
- Gwendolyn Brooks.
63. “The music is in minors.”
- Gwendolyn Brooks.
64. “Do not be afraid of no, Who has so far, so very far to go.”
- Gwendolyn Brooks.
65. “At a certain moment in social proceedings, I am on fire to leave: I have a leaving-fit.”
- Gwendolyn Brooks.
66. “No man can give me any word but wait…”
- Gwendolyn Brooks.
67. “Already I am no longer looked at with lechery or love.”
- Gwendolyn Brooks.
68. “To be in love, Is to touch things with a lighter hand. In yourself you stretch, you are well.”
- Gwendolyn Brooks.
69. “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.”
- Gwendolyn Brooks.
70. “You remember the children you got that you did not get.”
- Gwendolyn Brooks.
71. “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.”
- Gwendolyn Brooks.
72. “The forties and fifties were years of high poet-incense; the language-flowers were thickly sweet.”
- Gwendolyn Brooks.
73. “With melted opals for my milk, Pearl-leaf for my cracker.”
- Gwendolyn Brooks.
74. “What shall I give my children? who are poor, / Who are adjudged the leastwise of the land…”
- Gwendolyn Brooks.
Insightful Gwendolyn Brooks Quotes
Here are the thought-provoking quotes from the 'Annie Allen' poet and author. As a writer, she has the talent of capturing beautiful observations into words. Read on to discover excellent Gwendolyn Brooks quotes and 'meaning of life' quotes from the talented writer and poet.
75. “People like definite decisions, / Tidy answers, all the little ravelings.”
- Gwendolyn Brooks.
76. “... sometimes you have to deal / Devilishly with drowning men in order to swim them to shore.”
- Gwendolyn Brooks.
77. “There can be no whiter whiteness than this one: An insurance man's shirt on its morning run.”
- Gwendolyn Brooks.
78. “You're not less than anybody else.”
- Gwendolyn Brooks.
79. “I swear to keep the dead upon my mind, / Disdain for all time to be overglad.”
- Gwendolyn Brooks.
80. “The civil rights situation is like a pregnancy. It will get worse, I believe, before it gets better.”
- Gwendolyn Brooks.
81. “A poem doesn't do everything for you. You are supposed to go on with your thinking.”
- Gwendolyn Brooks.
82. “Art is a refining and evocative translation of the materials of the world.”
- Gwendolyn Brooks.
83. “Nothing could stop Mississippi.”
- Gwendolyn Brooks.
84. “When white and black meet today, sometimes there is a ready understanding that there has been an encounter between two human beings.”
- Gwendolyn Brooks.
85. “If you scream, you're marked "insane."
But silence is a place in which to scream!”
- Gwendolyn Brooks.
At Kidadl, we have created lots of interesting family-friendly quotes for everyone to enjoy! If you liked our quote suggestions for 85 Gwendolyn Brooks quotes from the inspiring author, then check out Tennessee Williams quotes and 'On The Road' quotes.
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With a wealth of international experience spanning Europe, Africa, North America, and the Middle East, Anusuya brings a unique perspective to her work as a Content Assistant and Content Updating Coordinator. She holds a law degree from India and has practiced law in India and Kuwait. Anusuya is a fan of rap music and enjoys a good cup of coffee in her free time. Currently, she is working on her novel, "Mr. Ivory Merchant".
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