From Jone Johnson Lewis,
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Gwendolyn Brooks was an Illinois poet laureate who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1950. See profile: Gwendolyn Brooks

Selected Gwendolyn Brooks Quotations

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

• Poetry is life distilled.

• I wrote about what I saw and heard on the street.

• I don't want to say that these poems have to be simple, but I want to clarify my language. I want these poems to be free. I want them to be direct without sacrificing the kinds of music, the picturemaking I've always been interested in.

• I had to kick their law into their teeth in order to save them.

• I think there are things for all of us to do as long as we're here and we're healthy.

• As you get older, you find that often the wheat, disentangling itself from the chaff, comes out to meet you.

• Art hurts. Art urges voyages —- and it is easier to stay at home.

• Be careful what you swallow. Chew!

• I who have gone the gamut from an almost angry rejection of my dark skin by some of my brainwashed brothers and sisters to a surprised queenhood in the new Black sunam qualified to enter at least the kindergarten of new consciousness now... I have hopes for myself.

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

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

• 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.

• If Mary came would Mary
Forgive, as Mothers may,
And sad and second Saviour
Furnish us today?

• If prejudice is native and it is you
Will find it ineradicable....

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

• Does man love Art? Man visits Art, but squirms.
Art hurts, Art urges voyages --
and it is easier to stay home,
the nice beer ready.

• Put on your rubbers and you won't catch cold.
Here's hell, there's heaven. Go to Sunday School.
Be patient, time brings all good things (and cool
Strong balm to calm the burning at the brain?)
Behold,
Love's true, and triumphs, and God's actual.

• Run.
People are coming. They must not catch us here
Definitionless in this strict atmosphere.

More About Gwendolyn Brooks

• Gwendolyn Brooks
• 20th Century Women Writers
• African American Women Writers

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About These Quotes

Quote collection assembled by Jone Johnson Lewis. Each quotation page in this collection and the entire collection © Jone Johnson Lewis 1997-2005. This is an informal collection assembled over many years. I regret that I am not be able to provide the original source if it is not listed with the quote.

Citation information:
Jone Johnson Lewis. "Gwendolyn Brooks Quotes." About Women's History. URL: http://womenshistory.about.com/od/quotes/a/gwendolynbrooks.htm . Date accessed: (today). (More on how to cite online sources including this page)