Abortions will not let you forget. You remember the children you got that you did not get.
Gwendolyn BrooksRead
A writer should get as much education as possible, but just going to school is not enough; if it were, all owners of doctorates would be inspired writers.
Interpretation
Education is vital for writers, but formal schooling alone doesn't guarantee good writing skills.
In this quote, Gwendolyn Brooks emphasizes that while education is important for writers, true inspiration and creativity come from experiences beyond formal schooling. Simply having a degree does not make one a talented writer; it takes passion, practice, and a diverse range of influences to develop one's voice and style.
In practice
In a writing workshop, a teacher might quote Brooks to inspire students to seek experiences beyond the classroom.
Abortions will not let you forget. You remember the children you got that you did not get.
Say to them, say to the down-keepers, the sun-slappers, the self-soilers, the harmony-hushers, "Even if you are not ready for day it cannot always be night." You will be right. For that is the hard home-run. Live not for battles won. Live not for the-end-of-the-song. Live in the along.
What I'm fighting for now in my work... for an expression relevant to all manner of blacks, poems I could take into a tavern, into the street, into the halls of a housing project.
Very early in life I became fascinated with the wonders language can achieve. And I began playing with words.
I shall create! If not a note, a hole./If not an overture, a desecration.
Art is a refining and evocative translation of the materials of the world.
Whoever has skill in music is of good temperament and fitted for all things. We must teach music in schools.
I feel very strongly indeed that a Cambridge education for our scientists should include some contact with the humanistic side. The gift of expression is important to them as scientists; the best research is wasted when it is extremely difficult to discover what it is all about ... It is even more important when scientists are called upon to play their part in the world of affairs, as is happening to an increasing extent.
Without education, we are weaker economically. Without economic power, we are weaker in terms of national security. No great military power has ever remained so without great economic power.
Today's Little Leaguers, and there are millions of them each year, pick up how to hit and throw and field just by watching games on TV. By the time they're out of high school, the good ones are almost ready to play professional ball.
Note too that a faithful study of the liberal arts humanizes character and permits it not to be cruel.
I do a great deal of work with young children, and if you give a child a problem, he may come up with a highly original solution, because he doesn't have the established route to it.
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