When white and black meet today, sometimes there is a ready understanding that there has been an encounter between two human beings. But often there is only, or chiefly, an awareness that Two Colors are in the room. — Gwendolyn Brooks Copy Share Image
A poem doesn't do everything for you. You are supposed to go on with your thinking. You are supposed to enrich the other person's poem with your extensions, your uniquely personal understandings, thus making the poem serve you. — Gwendolyn Brooks Copy Share Image
Very early in life I became fascinated with the wonders language can achieve. And I began playing with words. — Gwendolyn Brooks Copy Share Image
We real cool. We Left school. We Lurk late. We Strike straight. We Sing sin. We Thin gin. We Jazz June. We Die soon. — Gwendolyn Brooks Copy Share Image
I've always thought of myself as a reporter. When people ask why I don't stop writing, I say, `Look at what's happening in this… — Gwendolyn Brooks Copy Share Image
She was afraid to suggest to him that to most people, nothing "happens." That most people merely live from day to day until they… — Gwendolyn Brooks Copy Share Image
A writer should get as much education as possible, but just going to school is not enough; if it were, all owners of doctorates… — Gwendolyn Brooks Copy Share Image
Reading is important - read between the lines. Don't swallow everything. — Gwendolyn Brooks Copy Share Image
The forties and fifties were years of high poet-incense; the language-flowers were thickly sweet. Those flowers whined and begged white folks to pick them,… — Gwendolyn Brooks Copy Share Image
It frightens me to realize that, if I had died before the age of fifty, I would have died a 'Negro' fraction. — Gwendolyn Brooks Copy Share Image
One reason cats are happier than people is that they have no newspapers. — Gwendolyn Brooks Copy Share Image
