Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni, Jr. (Nikki Giovanni) Quotes

Writing is a conversation with reading; a dialogue with thinking. All conversations with older people contain repetition. Some of the ideas mean a lot to me, just interesting, so I both embrace and attack the ideas because I found them, well, delightful.

Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni, Jr.

• Thinking
• Writing
• Reading
• Mean

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Quotes to Explore

• I've always written songs that were confessional, acoustic, wordy - my writing style matches my personality. The music always has to match the mouth it comes out of.

  

  Camila Cabello Fifth Harmony
  • Music
  • Writing
  • Style

• I read my books to writing workshops and friends, and I'm often focussed just on keeping them entertained. I never think about marketing at all.

  

  Karen Joy Fowler
  • Writing
  • Friends
  • Marketing

• We had a few non-fiction books at home, but my dad was of the opinion that fiction was a complete and utter waste of time because it wasn't real - so what was the point of reading it?

  

  Malorie Blackman
  • Time
  • Real
  • Home

• I am just doing photo shoots. It's not something that extraordinary. I'm not a great artist, I'm not writing books, I'm not a painter, and people in the streets ask me for a picture or a note, and I say, 'Why?'

  

  Carine Roitfeld
  • People
  • Great
  • Writing

• I know how to fake someone out, if they break into my house, into thinking there are other people there.

  

  Paget Brewster
  • People
  • Thinking
  • House

• I don't read horror, ever. When I was 15, I made the mistake of reading part of 'The Exorcist.' It was the first and last horror book I've ever opened.

  

  Dan Brown
  • Book
  • Reading
  • Mistake

• If you want to start reading Swedish crime fiction, you have to start with Sjowall and Wahloo.

  

  Hakan Nesser
  • Want
  • Reading
  • Start

• 'Float On' was a fine song, but I was still writing the lyrics on the last day we were working on it and deciding if it was something we wanted to put on the record.

  

  Sir Isaac Brock KB
  • Writing
  • Song
  • Day

• Writing is a solitary journey, so I am always excited to go out on book tour and meet readers one-on-one.

  

  Dan Brown
  • Writing
  • Book
  • Journey

• Education... has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading.

  

  G. M. Trevelyan
  • Education
  • Reading
  • Worth

• You don't have to aim to be the best of everything, thinking that one day you're going to be the top of the world; I don't think it exists.

  

  Laura Mvula
  • World
  • Thinking
  • Day

• It usually takes me 20 to 90 minutes to write a song because once I start, I don't stop. If I start writing a song, and you try to have a conversation with me, you're a bad person.

  

  Halsey
  • Writing
  • Bad
  • Song

• Whenever you're writing something that's reflective, you have to put yourself through some sort of ordeal just to understand the way you're feeling.

  

  Damon Albarn Gorillaz
  • Writing
  • Feeling
  • Yourself

• I grew up reading Shakespeare and Mark Twain.

  

  Jackson Browne
  • Up
  • Reading
  • Mark

• Most of my job life has had to do with welfare, first helping people find work and then as an administrator. The earlier experience was more direct and satisfying, and I enjoy thinking that a bunch of people somewhere are doing better today than they might have done if not for me.

  

  Gail Carson Levine
  • People
  • Life
  • Work

• Medicine was certainly intended to be a career. I wanted to become a psychiatrist, an adolescent ambition which, of course, is fulfilled by many psychiatrists. The doctor/psychiatrist figures in my writing are alter egos of a kind, what I would have been had I not become a writer - a personal fantasy that I've fed into my fiction.

  

  J. G. Ballard
  • Writing
  • Career
  • Ambition

• I was already writing 'The Lost Symbol' when I started to realize 'The Da Vinci Code' would be big. The thing that happened to me and must happen to any writer who's had success is that I temporarily became very self-aware.

  

  Dan Brown
  • Writing
  • Success
  • Lost

• If I'm made to pick one transcendent reading experience, then it was listening to Miss Sarzin as - if we'd been very, very good - she read the next chapter of 'The Hobbit' aloud to us.

  

  Karen Joy Fowler
  • Experience
  • Reading
  • Listening

• The pleasure of reading biography, like that of reading letters, derives from the universal hunger to penetrate other lives.

  

  Patricia Meyer Spacks
  • Reading
  • Pleasure
  • Lives

• I stumbled into soul music at a very young age. It had something that really spoke to me. Nowadays it's not only American gospel or soul music, it's whenever somebody decides to do music in a way that's honest and passionate. I got into the Motown songs. It had to do with where I come from - we don't really have that where I come from, the sense of mystery and the pain. Sweden has been a wealthy and happy country for some time now. I think I got really drawn to that.

  

  Erik Hassle
  • Thinking
  • Country
  • Passionate

• Paintings must be understood through the eyes, and that's not the word either. No writing, no talking, no singing, no dancing will explain them. They are the final, the nth whoopee of sight.

  

  Charles Demuth
  • Writing
  • Singing
  • Eye

• We respect the freedom of all citizens. Young people should have fun, but there is no tolerance of drug abuse. Drugs have become a serious problem in Vietnam. This is why we have very strict penalties for any sort of drug dealing.

  

  Nguyen Minh Triet
  • Tolerance
  • Drugs
  • Penalties

• Writing is a conversation with reading; a dialogue with thinking. All conversations with older people contain repetition. Some of the ideas mean a lot to me, just interesting, so I both embrace and attack the ideas because I found them, well, delightful.

  

  Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni, Jr.
  • Thinking
  • Writing
  • Reading