The Bean Eaters Quotes

“We real cool. We
Left school. We

Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We

Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We

Jazz June. We
Die soon.”
― Gwendolyn Brooks, The Bean Eaters

“Time upholds or overturns
The many, tight, and small concerns.”
― Gwendolyn Brooks, The Bean Eaters

“Wonders do not confuse. We call them that
And close the matter there. But common things
Surprise us. They accept the names we give
With calm, and keep them. Easy-breathing then
We brave our next small business. Well, behind
Our backs they alter. How were we to know.”
― Gwendolyn Brooks, The Bean Eaters

“I keep my keys away that she
May never have to find
The enameled winter of your heart,
The pastels of your mind.”
― Gwendolyn Brooks, The Bean Eaters

“It was in a street of bitter white
That he made his application.
For Rudolph Reed was oakener
Than others in the nation.

The agent’s steep and steady stare
Corroded to a grin.
Why, you black old, tough old hell of a man,
Move your family in!

Nary a grin grinned Rudolph Reed,
Nary a curse cursed he,
But moved in his House. With his dark little wife,
And his dark little children three.

A neighbor would look, with a yawning eye
That squeezed into a slit.
But the Rudolph Reeds and the children three
Were too joyous to notice it.

For were they not firm in a home of their own
With windows everywhere
And a beautiful banistered stair
And a front yard for flowers and a back yard for grass?”
― Gwendolyn Brooks, The Bean Eaters

“It’s a day for running out of town
With a man whose eyes are brown.

We’ll go where trees leap up out of hills
And flowers are not planned.
We’ll be happy all our day.
First, he must press my hand,
In the afternoon discover my waist,
At night my mouth, and ask for the taste.
And he must call me “very sweet.”
And I must call him “clever.”

We’ll come back
Together at dawn
And hate each other forever.”
― Gwendolyn Brooks, The Bean Eaters

“I shall not sing a May song.
A May song should be gay.
I'll wait until November
And sing a song of gray.

I'll wait until November
That is the time for me.
I'll go out in the frosty dark
And sing most terribly.

And all the little people
Will stare at me and say,
"That is the Crazy Woman
Who would not sing in May.”
― Gwendolyn Brooks, The Bean Eaters

“My wife never quite forgets to put flowers in vases,
Bizarre prints in the most unusual places,
Give teas for poets, wear odoriferous furs.
An awful blooming is hers.”
― Gwendolyn Brooks, The Bean Eaters

“And true, they are hurling spittle, rock,
Garbage and fruit in Little Rock.
And I saw coiling storm a-writhe
On bright madonnas. And a scythe
Of men harassing brownish girls.
(The bows and barrettes in the curls
And braids declined away from joy.)

I saw a bleeding brownish boy....

The lariat lynch-wish I deplored.

The loveliest lynchee was our Lord.”
― Gwendolyn Brooks, The Bean Eaters

“In Little Rock they know
Not answering the telephone is a way of rejecting life,
That it is our business to be bothered, is our business
To cherish bores or boredom, be polite
To lies and love and many-faceted fuzziness.”
― Gwendolyn Brooks, The Bean Eaters

“Chaos in windy grays
Through a red prairie.”
― Gwendolyn Brooks, The Bean Eaters

“Perhaps the boy had never guessed
That the trouble with grown-ups was that under the magnificent shell of adulthood, just under,
Waited the baby full of tantrums.”
― Gwendolyn Brooks, The Bean Eaters

“My last defense
Is the present tense.

It little hurts me now to know
I shall not go

Cathedral-hunting in Spain
Nor cherrying in Michigan or Maine.”
― Gwendolyn Brooks, The Bean Eaters

“Two who are Mostly Good,
Two who have lived their day,
But keep on putting on their clothes
And putting things away.”
― Gwendolyn Brooks, The Bean Eaters

“Wee griefs,
Grand griefs. And choices.

He feared most of all the choices, that cried to be taken.”
― Gwendolyn Brooks, The Bean Eaters

“Somehow to find a still spot in the noise
Was the frayed inner want, the winding, the frayed hope
Whose tatters he kept hunting through the din,
A satin peace somewhere.
A room of wily hush somewhere within.”
― Gwendolyn Brooks, The Bean Eaters