Gwendolyn Brooks Quotes

Writing is a delicious agony.

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

Surely-But I am very off from that.
From surely. From indeed. From the decent arrow
that was my clean naivete and my faith.
This morning, men deliver wounds and death.
They will deliver death and wounds tomorrow.
And I doubt all. You. Or a violet.

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. That, after he had been dead a year, doubtless fewer than five people would think of him oftener than once a year. That there might even come a year when no one on earth would think of him at all.

Live not for Battles Won.
Live not for The-End-of-the-Song.
Live in the along.

Poetry is life distilled.

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

We real cool. We
Left school. We

Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We

Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We

Jazz June. We
Die soon.

Say to them,
say to the down-keepers,
the sun-slappers,
the self-soilers,
the harmony-hushers,
"Even if you are not ready for day
it cannot always be night."
You will be right.
For that is the hard home-run.

Live not for battles won.
Live not for the-end-of-the-song.
Live in the along.

We real cool. We
Left school. We

Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We

Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We

Jazz June. We
Die soon.

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

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