Gwendolyn Brooks

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

— Gwendolyn Brooks

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

— Gwendolyn Brooks

I like the concentration, the crush; I like working with language, as others like working with clay, or notes.

— Gwendolyn Brooks

But the People Will not let us alone; will not credit, condone Art-loves that shun Them (moderate Christians rotting in the sun.)

— Gwendolyn Brooks

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

— Gwendolyn Brooks

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

— Gwendolyn Brooks

It frightens me to realize that, if I had died before the age of fifty, I would have died a 'Negro' fraction.

— Gwendolyn Brooks

I felt that I had to write. Even if I had never been published, I knew that I would go on writing,…

— Gwendolyn Brooks

I don't like the idea of the black race being diluted out of existence. I like the idea of all of us…

— Gwendolyn Brooks

“Exhaust the little moment. Soon it dies. And be it gash or gold it will not come Again in this identical disguise.”

— Gwendolyn Brooks

“Surely--But I am very off from that. From surely. From indeed. From the decent arrow that was my clean naivete and my…

— Gwendolyn Brooks

I am a writer perhaps because I am not a talker. It has always been hard for me to say exactly what…

— Gwendolyn Brooks

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,…

— Gwendolyn Brooks

at a certain moment in social proceedings, I am on FIRE to leave: I have a leaving-FIT.

— Gwendolyn Brooks

I tell poets that when a line just floats into your head, don't pay attention 'cause it probably has floated into somebody…

— Gwendolyn Brooks

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

— Gwendolyn Brooks

We don't ask a flower any special reason for its existence. We just look at it and are able to accept it…

— Gwendolyn Brooks

There are no magics or elves / Or timely godmothers to guide us. We are lost, must / Wizard a track through…

— Gwendolyn Brooks

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

— Gwendolyn Brooks

Abortions will not let you forget. You remember the children you got that you did not get.

— Gwendolyn Brooks