Gwendolyn Brooks: Trending quotes (page 2)

“Art hurts. Art urges voyages—
and it is easier to stay at home.”

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

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

“The first night, a rock, big as two fists.
The second, a rock big as three.
But nary a curse cursed Rudolph Reed.
(Though oaken as man could be.)
The third night, a silvery ring of glass.
Patience arched to endure,
But he looked, and lo! small Mabel's blood
Was staining her gaze so pure.”

“I have heard in the voices of the wind the voices of my dim killed children.
I have contracted. I have eased
My dim dears at the breasts they could never suck.
I have said, Sweets, if I sinned, if I seized
Your luck
And your lives from your unfinished reach,
If I stole your births and your names,
Your straight baby tears and your games,
Your stilted or lovely loves, your tumults, your marriages, aches,
and your deaths,
If I poisoned the beginnings of your breaths,
Believe that even in my deliberateness I was not deliberate.”

“Believe me, I loved you all.
Believe me, I knew you, though faintly, and I loved, I loved you
All.”

“consider the big fists breaking your little bones,
or consider the vague bureaucrats
stumbling, fumbling through Paper.”

“I am interested in telling my particular truth as I have seen it.”

“It is brave to be involved
To be not fearful to be unresolved.”

“It is a real chill out. The fall crisp comes
I am aware there is winter to heed.
There is no warm house
That is fitted with my need.”

“Art is a refining and evocative translation of the materials of the world.”

“Rudolph Reed was oaken.
His wife was oaken too.
And his two good girls and his good little man
Oakened as they grew.”

“As you get older, you find that often the wheat, disentangling itself from the chaff, comes out to meet you.”

“Small Mabel whimpered all night long,
For calling herself the cause.
Her oak-eyed mother did no thing
But change the bloody gauze.”

“Be careful what you swallow. Chew!”

“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.”

“Come: there shall be such islanding from grief,
And small communion with the master shore.
Twang they. And I incline this ear to tin,
Consult a dual dilemma. Whether to dry
In humming pallor or to leap and die.”

“What shall I say, how is the truth to be said?
You were born, you had body, you died.
It is just that you never giggled or planned or cried.”

“Truth-tellers are not always palatable.
There is a preference for candy bars.”