Abortions will not let you forget. You remember the children you got that you did not get.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on the lasting emotional impact of abortion and the memories of lost children.
Gwendolyn Brooks' quote highlights the profound grief and remembrance that accompanies the experience of abortion. It suggests that the decision to terminate a pregnancy leaves an indelible mark on one's memory and emotional landscape, as the thoughts of the potential children linger long after the choice is made.
In practice
In a discussion about reproductive rights, this quote can illustrate the emotional consequences of abortion.
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.
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.
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.
Service is what life is all about.
Somebody said to me this morning, 'To what do you attribute your longevity?' I don't know. I mean, I couldn't have planned my life out better. By all accounts I should be dead! The abuse I put my body through: the drugs, the alcohol, the lifestyle I've lived the last 30 years!
Life can be wildly tragic at times, and I've had my share. But whatever happens to you, you have to keep a slightly comic attitude. In the final analysis, you have got not to forget to laugh.
If I had been born in the circus, my parents would have pushed me on that little high wire at four years old. That's when the body is most limber to learn those acrobatics.
People think that their world will get smaller as they get older. My experience is just the opposite. Your senses become more acute. You start to blossom.
Some pain is simply the normal grief of human existence. That is pain that I try to make room for. I honor my grief.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.