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 More Quotes by Gwendolyn Brooks More Quotes From Gwendolyn Brooks 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 decision insanity people I know that the Black emphasis must be not against white but FOR Black. Gwendolyn Brooks black racism white This is the urgency: Live! and have your blooming in the noise of the whirlwind. Gwendolyn Brooks blooming noise life It is brave to be involved. To be not fearful to be unresolved. Gwendolyn Brooks diversity bravery courage I've always thought of myself as a reporter. When people ask why I don't stop writing, I say, `Look at what's happening in this world. Every day there's something exciting or disturbing to write about.’ With all that's going on, how could I stop? Gwendolyn Brooks writing people world 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 challenges goes-on writing 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 taverns fighting expression Be careful what you swallow. Chew! Gwendolyn Brooks be-careful words-of-wisdom african-american What shall I give my children? who are poor, / Who are adjudged the leastwise of the land... Gwendolyn Brooks land giving children Writing is a delicious agony. Gwendolyn Brooks delicious agony writing Art is a refining and evocative translation of the materials of the world. Gwendolyn Brooks materials world art Good health is a duty to yourself, to your contemporaries, to your inheritors, to the progress of the world. Gwendolyn Brooks good-health progress world She was learning to love moments. To love moments for themselves. Gwendolyn Brooks learning-to-love moments 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 stress pain baby Poetry is life distilled. Gwendolyn Brooks poetry-is poetry life Each body has its art. Gwendolyn Brooks body healing art I am an ordinary human being who is impelled to write poetry. ... I still do feel that a poet has a duty to words, and that words can do wonderful things, and it's too bad to just let them lie there without doing anything with and for them. Gwendolyn Brooks ordinary writing lying When you use the term minority or minorities in reference to people, you're telling them that they're less than somebody else. Gwendolyn Brooks minorities use people Goodness begins simply with the fact of life itself. Gwendolyn Brooks facts-of-life goodness facts What, what am I to do with all of this life? Gwendolyn Brooks this-life