Gwendolyn Brooks was an Illinois poet laureate who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1950. See profile: Gwendolyn Brooks

• We are each others harvest; we are each others business; we are each others magnitude and bond.

• Poetry is life distilled.

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

• I dont 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 Ive 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 were here and were 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 wont catch cold.

Heres hell, theres heaven. Go to Sunday School.

Be patient, time brings all good things (and cool

Strong balm to calm the burning at the

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