First fight. Then fiddle.

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.

This is the urgency: Live! and have your blooming in the noise of the whirlwind.

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?

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.

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

There can be no whiter whiteness than this one: An insurance man's shirt on its morning run.