Gwendolyn Brooks

Live not for Battles Won.
Live not for The-End-of-the-Song. 
Live in the along.

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

Writing is a delicious agony.

One reason that cats are happier than people is that they have no newspapers.

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

Poetry is life distilled.

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

She was learning to love moments. To love moments for themselves. 

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