Gwendolyn Famous Quotes & Sayings
100 Gwendolyn Famous Sayings, Quotes and Quotation.
my dreams, my works, must wait till after hell— Gwendolyn Brooks
I hold my honey and I store my bread
In little jars and cabinets of my will.
I label clearly, and each latch and lid
I bid, Be firm till I return from hell.
I am very hungry. I am incomplete.
And none can tell when I may dine again.
No man can give me any word but Wait,
The puny light. I keep eyes pointed in;
Hoping that, when the devil days of my hurt
Drag out to their last dregs and I resume
On such legs as are left me, in such heart
As I can manage, remember to go home,
My taste will not have turned insensitive
To honey and bread old purity could love.
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
The universe was a disorderly mess, the only interesting bits being the organised anomalies. Hackworth had once taken his family out rowing on the pond in the park, and the ends of the yellow oars spun off compact vortices, and Fiona, who had taught herself the physics of liquids through numerous experimental beverage spills and in the bathtub, demanded an explanation for these holes in water. She leaned over the gunwale, Gwendolyn holding the sash of her dress, and felt those vortices with her hands, wanting to understand them. The rest of the pond, simply water in no particular order, was uninteresting.— Neal Stephenson
Hating you shall be a game— Gwendolyn B. Bennett
Played with cool hands
And slim fingers.
Your heart will yearn
For the lonely splendor
Of the pine tree
While rekindled fires
In my eyes
Shall wound you like swift arrows.
Memory will lay its hands
Upon your breast
And you will understand
My hatred.
With melted opals for my milk, Pearl-leaf for my cracker.— Gwendolyn Brooks
At a certain moment in social proceedings, I am on FIRE to leave: I have a leaving-FIT.— Gwendolyn Brooks
Even if you are not ready for day— Gwendolyn Brooks
it cannot always be night.
I know that the Black emphasis must be not against white but FOR Black.— Gwendolyn Brooks
We can't ignore right-wing demagogues who insist that the word of the doctor who proclaims a child's sex at birth somehow holds more sway over the reality of the body than the word of the person who inhabits it. - Gwendolyn Ann Smith— Kate Bornstein
As you get older, you find that often the wheat, disentangling itself from the chaff, comes out to meet you.— Gwendolyn Brooks
I don't like the idea of the black race being diluted out of existence. I like the idea of all of us being here.— Gwendolyn Brooks
Truth— Gwendolyn Brooks
And if sun comes
How shall we greet him?
Shall we not dread him,
Shall we not fear him
After so lengthy a
Session with shade?
Though we have wept for him,
Though we have prayed
All through the night-years -
What if we wake one shimmering morning to
Hear the fierce hammering
Of his firm knuckles
Hard on the door?
Shall we not shudder? -
Shall we not flee
Into the shelter, the dear thick shelter
Of the familiar
Propitious haze?
Sweet is it, sweet is it
To sleep in the coolness
Of snug unawareness.
The dark hangs heavily
Over the eyes.
Books are meat and medicine— Gwendolyn Brooks
and flame and flight and flower
steel, stitch, cloud and clout,
and drumbeats on the air.
There are no magics or elves / Or timely godmothers to guide us. We are lost, must / Wizard a track through our own screaming weed.— Gwendolyn Brooks
The poetry is myself.— Gwendolyn Brooks
Truth-tellers are not always palatable. There is a preference for candy bars.— Gwendolyn Brooks
did a soul's path adhere to a pattern, like the connecting lines on a mandala?— Gwendolyn Womack
Vyck had often encouraged him to engage an opponent's mind rather than its weapons. often this advice was accompanied by the casual remark that if he couldn't outwit a fox he shouldn't be in the woods.— Gwendolyn Druyor
I was reading Carl Sandburg and Gwendolyn Brooks, and I'm still very, very deeply moved by Gwendolyn Brooks's life and her work.— Sandra Cisneros
According to Plato, Socrates believed all knowledge came from a divine state, but humans had forgotten it. Most lived in a cave of ignorance, but one could become enlightened by climbing out of the darkness and understanding the divide between the spiritual and material planes.— Gwendolyn Womack
It is brave to be involved— Gwendolyn Brooks
People are so in need, in need of help.— Gwendolyn Brooks
People want so much that they do not know.
I swear to keep the dead upon my mind, / Disdain for all time to be overglad.— Gwendolyn Brooks
Art hurts. Art urges voyages - and it is easier to stay at home.— Gwendolyn Brooks
existence like every middle-school student who'd ever been forced to come out of their bedroom.— Gwendolyn Knapp
Sometimes, we forget to reflect back on all the great times we had by just ourselves. You can be your own best friend, you know.— Gwendolyn Heasley
Happily ever after is not a place: It's a state of being, and you have to work at it every day.— Gwendolyn Heasley
True forgiveness for me has been and is a progression of faltering baby steps through a storm of flying debris.— Gwendolyn M. Plano
The thing about good girls is that just because they are good, it doesn't mean they don't ever consider being bad.— Gwendolyn Heasley
And speaking of hotties, I have to go," I finish and turn to finish my walk toward Bubby.— Gwendolyn Heasley
Always be willing to love again. Loving once is easy. Loving twice is harder, but love anytime is always worth it.— Gwendolyn Heasley
Vulnerability is a pretty scary thing. You can feel naked in a lot of different ways.— Gwendolyn Heasley
Exhaust the little moment. Soon it dies.— Gwendolyn Brooks
And be it gash or gold it will not come
Again in this identical disguise.
Sincerity like this staggers me; I've seen too little and too much of it one way and another; I've valued it so highly that when someone hands it to me as directly as you have, I'm not sure whether I should jump for joy or burst into tears. - Gwendolyn MacEwen to Milton Acorn, 1960 (age 19)— David Eso
Life for my child is simple, and is good.— Gwendolyn Brooks
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
We are each other's harvest; we are each other's business; we are each other's magnitude and bond.— Gwendolyn Brooks
All eager-lipped I kissed the mouth of Death.— Gwendolyn B. Bennett
When he came round he was staring up at the familiar face as Gwendolyn Dawling knelt over him about to address the nasty bump on his head.— Ray Harris
'I haven't got any butter. So I hope this will do instead Father Moriarty', she said as she removed a dollop of Flora pro.activ from the carton.
'I don't think you use butter any more for bumps Gwendolyn.'
'Is it a Common Market thing?'
'No it's just bad science.
I want to feel the surging— Gwendolyn B. Bennett
Of my sad people's soul
Hidden by a minstrel-smile.
If she had been a normal female, she would have swooned. But she was not normal, never had been.— Loretta Chase
"Good grief, you are impossibly handsome," she said breathlessly. "I vow, I have never experienced the like. For an instant, my brain stopped altogether. I must say, my lord, you do clean up well. But next time, I wish you would call out a warning before you come into view, and give me a chance to brace myself for the onslaught."
Something dark flickered in his eyes. Then a corner of his hard mouth quirked up. "Miss Adams, you have an interesting - a unique - way with a compliment."
The trace of a smile disoriented her further. "It is a unique experience," she said. "I never knew my brain to shut off before, not while I was full awake. I wonder if the phenomenon has been scientifically documented and what physiological explanation has been proposed.
It frightens me to realize that, if I had died before the age of fifty, I would have died a 'Negro' fraction ...— Gwendolyn Brooks
Already I am no longer looked at with lechery or love.— Gwendolyn Brooks
Do you think that Gwendolyn Brooks would give an award to someone who hated Black women, the lie that was circulated throughout New York and reached all the way down to Martinique where I was a guest Professor? The lie was circulated by people who don't read my books.— Ishmael Reed
Lie to me, Gwendolyn. Tell me that he raped you.— Lori Jenessa Nelson
When white and black meet today, sometimes there is a ready understanding that there has been an encounter between two human beings. But often there is only, or chiefly, an awareness that Two Colors are in the room.— Gwendolyn Brooks
To divine is to imagine the world rightly, to see past the illusion that we are separate from the entire fabric of reality.— Gwendolyn Womack
My last defense / Is the present tense.— Gwendolyn Brooks
I shall create! If not a note, a hole./If not an overture, a desecration.— Gwendolyn Brooks
Wisdom is to be fostered where it is found and those who judge without discretion do so because they themselves are blinded and chained to the vestibule of ignorance. Those lacking the sight to understand the circumstance and perspective of another place primacy on the material over the spiritual and become symptomatic of the problem rather than the cure.— Gwendolyn Taunton
Bubby gently grabs me around the waist and pulls me to the ground.— Gwendolyn Heasley
"Touchdown," he whispers.
Be careful what you swallow. Chew!— Gwendolyn Brooks
Be yourself. Don't imitate other poets. You are as important as they are.— Gwendolyn Brooks
Words can do wonderful things. They pound, purr. They can urge, they can wheedle, whip, whine. They can sing, sass, singe. They can churn, check, channelize. They can be a "Hup two three four." They can forge a fiery army of a hundred languid men.— Gwendolyn Brooks
Beware the easy griefs / that fool and fuel nothing.— Gwendolyn Brooks
He leaned deeper toward me and said softly, "I'm gonna tell you what I make of this. What I make of it, Gwendolyn, is if my woman had a sister who I knew was in some serious shit, she would not be havin' a chat with Kane Allen, she would not be sleepin' alone and therefore she would not ever have to worry about whether she needs a baseball bat of crowbar because she'd be in bed beside me." Mitch Lawson— Kristen Ashley
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
Once inside I stripped off my clothes and showered. Refreshed, I pick up my phone and type.— Gwendolyn Grace
ME: I want you. Come over now if you feel the same way.
I held my breath as a I waited for a response but after several minutes none came. Maybe he wasn't going to come.
I cannot live without you, Gwendolyn, nor can I believe the gods have brought us through so much only to tear us apart again. If I must face the possibility of death, then so be it.— Miriam Minger
But really, all memories are like paintings: They can be incredibly vivid and lifelike. But in the end, they both just remind us that we only get to live any particular moment once, even if we remember it forever.— Gwendolyn Heasley
Reading is important - read between the lines. Don't swallow everything.— Gwendolyn Brooks
Do not be afraid of no,— Gwendolyn Brooks
Who has so far, so very far to go.
What, what am I to do with all of this life?— Gwendolyn Brooks
But it is never over;— Gwendolyn MacEwen
nothing ends until we want it to.
Look, in shattered midnights,
On black ice under silver trees,
We are still dancing, dancing.
Nothing could stop Mississippi.— Gwendolyn Brooks
Goodness begins simply with the fact of life itself.— Gwendolyn Brooks
Always remember the answers come not from the rock, the teacup, the shell, or the cards. The answers come from you.— Gwendolyn Womack
But when he saw Gwendolyn's father, he immediately knew that he was Jewish, in the way that Jews recognize each other, as if with a sixth sense.— Sharon Pomerantz
Good health is a duty to yourself, to your contemporaries, to your inheritors, to the progress of the world.— Gwendolyn Brooks
Surprisingly, Gwendolyn, I have more important things to do with my time, like put bamboo shoots under my nails or drill holes in all my teeth.— Shelly Laurenston
People like definite decisions, / Tidy answers, all the little ravelings / Snipped off, the lint removed, they / Hop happily among their roughs / Calling what they can't clutch insanity / Or saintliness.— Gwendolyn Brooks
Keep following your dreams even if you get off course.— Gwendolyn Heasley
The civil rights situation is like a pregnancy. It will get worse, I believe, before it gets better. What the usual pregnancy comes to is a decent baby. That is what we all hope will be the end product of this stress. It is customary, at the end of a pregnancy, to have for your pains a decent baby.— Gwendolyn Brooks
Now you comprehend your first and final lover / in the dark receding planets of his eyes, / and this is the hour when you know moreover / that the god you have loved always / will descend and lie with you in paradise.— Gwendolyn MacEwen
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.— Gwendolyn Brooks
Nickamedes stared at me, his blue eyes bright. Then, he— Jennifer Estep
did something I never imagined he would do in a million years. He stepped forward, reached out, and
hugged me tight with one arm.
"If I am ever lucky enough to have a daughter, I hope that she's just like you, Gwendolyn," he
whispered
Save Our Planet Recycle Knowledge— Gwendolyn Moore RN MSN Ed
Two students severely injured, you yourself covered in blood, a Reaper on the premises, a Fenrir wolf running around loose somewhere, and extensive property damage to the resort. Well?" Nickamedes snapped. "What do you have to say for yourself, Gwendolyn?"— Jennifer Estep
I thought for a second, then grinned at him. "I followed your directions exactly. I never set one foot outside the hotel.
The music is in minors.— Gwendolyn Brooks
Running away from home is not a good idea. Unless, of course, you happen to be forty years old, and then your parents will probably shout, "Hurrah!" and change the locks the minute you've stepped off the front stoop. But in the case of Gwendolyn and Homer, ages fifteen and twelve, setting off in the middle of the night would only bring their parents immense heartache and worry.— Suzanne Selfors
Our relationship wasn't easy. It wasn't mellow. It wasn't comfortable and sedate. He was too bossy and I was too much of a smartass. We bantered and sometimes we fought. But I'd learned I was completely unable to endure Hawk being mad at me and then I'd noticed that Hawk felt the same. No grudges were ever held. We created sparks but those sparks never caught the kind of fire that could do damage. Instead, we got over it and moved on.— Kristen Ashley
When you use the term minority or minorities— Gwendolyn Brooks
in reference to people, you're telling them that
they're less than somebody else.
To be in love— Gwendolyn Brooks
Is to touch things with a lighter hand.
In yourself you stretch, you are well.
Sometimes you have to deal / Devilishly with drowning men in order to swim them to shore.— Gwendolyn Brooks
I realize now that tragedy spares no one; it just courts each of us differently.— Gwendolyn M. Plano
Welcome to Neverland, Gwendolyn— Lisa Maxwell
I am interested in telling my particular truth as I have seen it.— Gwendolyn Brooks
I want to hear the chanting— Gwendolyn B. Bennett
Around a heathen fire
Of a strange black race.
People aren't pianos. You don't hit a certain note and know what you're going to get.— Gwendolyn Heasley
Abortions will not let you forget. You remember the children you got that you did not get.— Gwendolyn Brooks
When I start writing a poem, I don't think about models or about what anybody else in the world has done.— Gwendolyn Brooks
A poem doesn't do everything for you.— Gwendolyn Brooks
You are supposed to go on with your thinking.
You are supposed to enrich
the other person's poem with your extensions,
your uniquely personal understandings,
thus making the poem serve you.
Art is a refining and evocative translation of the materials of the world.— Gwendolyn Brooks
She was learning to love moments. To love moments for themselves.— Gwendolyn Brooks
When it came time to build a tabernacle, the Israelite women brought all their mirrors to Moses so he could use them to make God's building more beautiful. (Exodus 38:8.) They were far more interested in enjoying God's glory than reflecting on their own images.— Gwendolyn Diaz
What she wanted was to donate to the world a good Maud Martha. That was the offering, the bit of art, that could not come from any other. She would polish and hone that.— Gwendolyn Brooks
The brain is its own galaxy, with more cells than stars in the Milky Way. The most powerful organ in the body, it rivals any supercomputer, processing 90,000 to 150,000 thoughts a day through billions of neurons and trillions of synaptic connections. Now that we have found a pathway to retrieving memories that before were inaccessible, we are perfecting its function too quickly.— Gwendolyn Womack
I felt that I had to write. Even if I had never been published, I knew that I would go on writing, enjoying it and experiencing the challenge.— Gwendolyn Brooks
Very early in life I became fascinated with the wonders language can achieve. And I began playing with words.— Gwendolyn Brooks
I think there are things for all of us to do as long as we're here and we're healthy.— Gwendolyn Brooks
