Top 83 quotes by Gwendolyn Brooks

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Do not desire to fit in. Desire to oblige yourselves to lead.
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 as being something different from ourselves.
Gwendolyn Brooks

Able , Flower , Special

I believe we should all know each other, we human carriers of so many pleasurable differences. To not know is to doubt, to shrink from, sidestep or destroy.
Gwendolyn Brooks

Believe , Differences , Doubt

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

Book , Important , Reading

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

Success , Inspiring , Happiness

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

Love , Inspirational , Wedding

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

Gwendolyn Brooks (2005). “The Essential Gwendolyn Brooks”, p.129, Library of America

Love , Inspirational , Wedding

Don't let anyone call you a minority if you're black or Hispanic or belong to some other ethnic group. You're not less than anybody else.
Gwendolyn Brooks

Black , Groups , Minorities

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

Book , Reading , Flower

Truth-tellers are not always palatable. There is a preference for candy bars.
Gwendolyn Brooks

Gwendolyn Brooks (1988). “Gottschalk and the grande tarantelle”, Third World Pr

Truth , Teaching , Bars

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

"Annie Allen". Book by Gwendolyn Brooks, 1949.

Life , Littles , Gold

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, into the street, into the halls of a housing project.
Gwendolyn Brooks

Gwendolyn Brooks, Gloria Jean Wade Gayles (2003). “Conversations with Gwendolyn Brooks”, p.107, Univ. Press of Mississippi

Fighting , Expression , Taverns

When you love a man, he becomes more than a body. His physical limbs expand, and his outline recedes, vanishes. He is rich and sweet and right. He is part of the world, the atmosphere, the blue sky and the blue water.
Gwendolyn Brooks

Men , Love , Sweet

Even if you are not ready for day it cannot always be night.
Gwendolyn Brooks

Gwendolyn Brooks, “Speech To The Young: Speech To The Progress-Toward”

Night , Ready , Slappers

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.
Gwendolyn Brooks

Gwendolyn Brooks, “Speech To The Young: Speech To The Progress-Toward”

Running , Home , Song