Gwendolyn Brooks

"I am a writer perhaps because I am not a talker."

"Poetry is life distilled."

"Art hurts. Art urges voyages - and it is easier to stay at home."

"When you love a man, he becomes more than a body. His physical limbs expand, and his outline recedes, vanishes. He is rich and sweet and right. He is part of the world, the atmosphere, the blue sky and the blue water."

"Writing is a delicious agony."