Writer Quotes by Gwendolyn Brooks

My last defense / Is the present tense.

— Gwendolyn Brooks

Nothing could stop Mississippi.

— Gwendolyn Brooks

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

— Gwendolyn Brooks

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

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

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

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

Reading is important - read between the lines. Don't swallow everything.

— Gwendolyn Brooks

No man can give me any word but Wait.

— Gwendolyn Brooks

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

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

— Gwendolyn Brooks

One reason cats are happier than people is that they have no newspapers.

— Gwendolyn Brooks

We are each other's magnitude and bond.

— Gwendolyn Brooks

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,…

— Gwendolyn Brooks

And if sun comes / How shall we greet him? / Shall we not dread him, / Shall we not fear him / After…

— Gwendolyn Brooks