I don't want people running around saying Gwen Brooks's work is intellectual. That makes people think instantly about obscurity. It shouldn't have to mean that, but it often seems to.

Do not desire to fit in. Desire to oblige yourselves to lead.

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.

I believe we should all know each other, we human carriers of so many pleasurable differences. To not know is to doubt, to shrink from, sidestep or destroy.

Reading is important - read between the lines. Don't swallow everything.

We are each other's harvest; we are each other's business; we are each other's magnitude and bond.

Don't let anyone call you a minority if you're black or Hispanic or belong to some other ethnic group. You're not less than anybody else.

I think there are things for all of us to do as long as we're here and we're healthy.

Books are meat and medicine and flame and flight and flower steel, stitch, cloud and clout, and drumbeats on the air.

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

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

Do not let the transient bitterness of the journey steal happiness from your life.

-You have no respect for excessive authority or obsolete traditions. You're dangerous and depraved, and you ought to be taken outside and shot!

Death is the first and final entry in the book of this life.

It’s taken years, but part of my own personal growth has involved deciding that I can learn something from even the most annoying person.

And from the coffin of your madness there is no escape.

I hope people don't get tired of looking at me.

You watch the news these days? It's unbelievable. You think you just walk out your door, you're immediately gonna be raped by some crack-addicted, AIDS-infected pitbull.

Different groups in different areas developed different traits to assure their survival.

I think the best part of being Catholic, strange as it might sound, is that I know it's right. It's true.

People who have never had a broken heart will never understand dead roses, Tolstoy, airport lounges, Albinoni's Adagio in G Minor, neat brandy, the moon and drizzle.