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.”

“Say to them,say to the down-keepers,the sun-slappers,the self-soilers,the harmony-hushers,"Even if you are not ready for dayit 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.”

“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.”

“She was learning to love moments. To love moments for themselves. ”

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

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

“When You Have Forgotten Sunday: The Love Story-- And when you have forgotten the bright bedclothes on a Wednesday and a Saturday, And most especially when you have forgotten Sunday -- When you have forgotten Sunday halves in bed, Or me sitting on the front-room radiator in the limping afternoon Looking off down the long street To nowhere, Hugged by my plain old wrapper of no-expectation And nothing-I-have-to-do and I’m-happy-why? And if-Monday-never-had-to-come— When you have forgotten that, I say, And how you swore, if somebody beeped the bell, And how my heart played hopscotch if the telephone rang; And how we finally went in to Sunday dinner, That is to say, went across the front room floor to the ink-spotted table in the southwest corner To Sunday dinner, which was always chicken and noodles Or chicken and rice And salad and rye bread and tea And chocolate chip cookies --I say, when you have forgotten that, When you have forgotten my little presentiment That the war would be over before they got to you; And how we finally undressed and whipped out the light and flowed into bed, And lay loose-limbed for a moment in the week-end Bright bedclothes, Then gently folded into each other— When you have, I say, forgotten all that, Then you may tell, Then I may believe You have forgotten me well.”

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

“Books are meat and medicineand flame and flight and flowersteel, stitch, cloud and clout,and drumbeats on the air.”

“ To be in loveIs to touch things with a lighter hand.In yourself you stretch, you are well.”

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

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

“Poetry is life distilled.”

“What, what am I to do with all of this life?”

“Surely--But I am very off from that.From surely. From indeed. From the decent arrowthat 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.”

“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”

“When you use the term minority or minorities in reference to people, you're telling them that they're less than somebody else.”

“Writing is a delicious agony.”

“Exhaust the little moment. Soon it dies.And be it gash or gold it will not comeAgain in this identical disguise.”

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

“Each body has its art...”

“I shall create! If not a note, a hole./If not an overture, a desecration.”