Gwendolyn Brooks

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. ”

We are each other's magnitude and bond. ”

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

I've always thought of myself as a reporter. ”

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. ”

Poetry is life distilled. ”

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

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. ”

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

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. ”