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I appreciate and enjoy my age.
Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni, Jr. -
Schools should be integrated by race and by class.
Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni, Jr.
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Who I really am keeps surprising me.
Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni, Jr. -
God knows it's a sign of a really sick mind to see grown people, adults with responsibilities, wearing class rings.
Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni, Jr. -
Just as nature abhors a vacuum, humans resist change. Change will occur; vacuums will be filled.
Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni, Jr. -
I am so hip even my errors are correct
Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni, Jr. -
I am proud of the hip hop generation. They are good business people and, actually, good people. It's strange that the only time the major press talks about them is when someone gets killed or does drugs or something; yet these are the same press people who made heroes out of the Mafia and other crooks, you know.
Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni, Jr. -
Floating to shore...riding a low moon...on a slow cloud.
Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni, Jr.
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I am of the generation of segregation. Black Lives Matter is post. I said today, and I will say all the time, "If Nina [Simone] were here, she'd have her Black Lives Matter [T-shirt] on." I think they're great kids. They don't need me or anybody else to tell them what to do.
Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni, Jr. -
Nothing improves your writing, I think, as much as your keeping writing.
Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni, Jr. -
You do what you can with what you have. You have to work the edges whatever they are. The main thing is keeping your integrity.
Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni, Jr. -
Mistakes are a fact of life. If you are willing to be wrong then you have earned the right to be right.
Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni, Jr. -
Storytelling is how history is passed. It's what our ancestors did, it's what everybody's done. It has to come back into a story because otherwise, it's stuck in this book and it's boring and it's academic and I'm not against intelligence and I'm not against education, I don't want to be misunderstood, but we have tell the stories to our young people a little bit early and history gives us a lot of things.
Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni, Jr. -
If you don't understand yourself you don't understand anybody else.
Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni, Jr.
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I think that too many strangers were in her [Nina Simone's] life, and not enough people that she knew and loved.
Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni, Jr. -
i hope i die warmed by the life that i tried to live
Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni, Jr. -
Sacred cows make very poor gladiators.
Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni, Jr. -
We write because we believe the human spirit cannot be tamed and should not be trained.
Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni, Jr. -
It is not who you attend school with but who controls the school you attend.
Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni, Jr. -
go barefoot and be warm all the time not only when you go to bed and sleep
Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni, Jr.
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She knows who she is, because she knows who she isn't.
Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni, Jr. -
Violence is like money in the bank; it's only helpful if you don't have to use it.
Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni, Jr. -
The poet can only write the poems; it takes the reader to complete the meaning.
Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni, Jr. -
In law school they teach you that everything is a contract; well, in poetry everything is a narrative.
Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni, Jr.