With melted opals for my milk, Pearl-leaf for my cracker. Gwendolyn Brooks More Quotes by Gwendolyn Brooks More Quotes From Gwendolyn Brooks ... sometimes you have to deal / Devilishly with drowning men in order to swim them to shore. Gwendolyn Brooks swim men order As you get older, you find that often the wheat, disentangling itself from the chaff, comes out to meet you. Gwendolyn Brooks aging wheat Be yourself. Don't imitate other poets. You are as important as they are. Gwendolyn Brooks being-yourself poet important I am interested in telling my particular truth as I have seen it. Gwendolyn Brooks particular Exhaust the little moment / Soon it dies. Gwendolyn Brooks passion live-in-the-moment littles 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? Gwendolyn Brooks fear sun happiness 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. Gwendolyn Brooks education writing school I am a writer perhaps because I am not a talker. Gwendolyn Brooks clumsiness talkers I like the concentration, the crush; I like working with language, as others like working with clay, or notes. Gwendolyn Brooks clay crush language 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 color white two I am a writer perhaps because I am not a talker. It has always been hard for me to say exactly what I mean in speech But if I have written a clumsiness, I may erase it. Gwendolyn Brooks clumsiness speech mean I swear to keep the dead upon my mind, / Disdain for all time to be overglad. Gwendolyn Brooks all-time grief mind When I start writing a poem, I don't think about models or about what anybody else in the world has done. Gwendolyn Brooks done writing thinking 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 rejection brother dark We are each other's magnitude and bond. Gwendolyn Brooks bridal-shower wedding-toast ties Abortions will not let you forget. You remember the children you got that you did not get. Gwendolyn Brooks abortion remember children beware the easy griefs / that fool and fuel nothing. Gwendolyn Brooks fool fuel grief First fight. Then fiddle. Gwendolyn Brooks fiddle fighting firsts No man can give me any word but Wait. Gwendolyn Brooks waiting giving men To be in love Is to touch things with a lighter hand. In yourself you stretch, you are well. Gwendolyn Brooks wells love-is hands