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.
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.
-
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.
-
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?
-
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?'
-
I know how to fake someone out, if they break into my house, into thinking there are other people there.
-
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.
-
If you want to start reading Swedish crime fiction, you have to start with Sjowall and Wahloo.
-
'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.
-
Writing is a solitary journey, so I am always excited to go out on book tour and meet readers one-on-one.
-
Education... has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
I grew up reading Shakespeare and Mark Twain.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
There's sketch, improv, writing, acting, music, and badminton. Those are the seven forms of comedy. But I do like the idea of being an auteur in the sense of writing and being in your own stuff.
-
I don't ever feel that it's necessary to say certain things. I think we can be very suggestive. I think we can allude to certain things.
-
I would love to host a television show.
-
Live in the moment. Moments make history.
-
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.
