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

• Father or stepfather – those are just titles to me. They don't mean anything.

  

  Oliver Hudson
  • Father
  • Me
  • Mean

• 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

• I started writing songs at age 15.

  

  Vince Clarke Depeche Mode
  • Writing
  • Age
  • Started

• A lot of people get flipped out if you're quiet. They say stuff like, What are you thinking? And if they don't start interrogating you, they start talking, going on and on about stuff that's totally irrelevant, and the silence gets so big and loud that it's scary.

  

  A.M. Homes
  • People
  • Thinking
  • Silence

• I think that part of my optimism comes from the belief that we as a people could actually, regardless of all the disadvantage of the past, regardless of the fact that a lot of other folks got a head start in the race, if we were able to make the race fair right now.

  

  Barack Obama
  • People
  • Thinking
  • Past

• The mind is not a book, to be opened at will and examined at leisure. Thoughts are not etched on the inside of skulls, to be perused by an invader. The mind is a complex and many-layered thing.

  

  Joanne Rowling
  • Mind
  • Book
  • Thoughts

• 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