Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni, Jr. (Nikki Giovanni) Quotes
Quotes to Explore
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I would have been completely brainwashed by this lopsided and racist view of the world if it weren't for my father. He was a deep thinker and an irrepressible problem solver. He was a Black Socrates, asking why and then spoiling ready-made replies.
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My extreme characters are in a state of rebellion or who are being ostracized or being misunderstood, or misfits or trying to fit in and fighting for their rights to love, live, and co-exist. They sort of mirror my own demons.
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I don't have hard numbers about this, but the impression I get is that the amount of eyeballs you get from being on the humor shelf at Barnes & Noble - it is almost insignificant.
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This is how I feel about the LGBT community: they are people just like us.
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I would have to be able to come and go as I please. I could not sit in some office.
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I thought of myself as an adult trapped in a kid's body. Had I known what adulthood was like, I would have embraced childhood a little more.
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Regardless of how good or bad a collection might be, it's a letdown after the show is over. It's done. Something you've worked on for months is just over.
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In business or in life, don't follow the wagon tracks too closely.
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For every problem or confusion and for every desire or ambition there is an available force waiting for your call.
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With our lives and food chain set up to make us fat - I mean, you can't drive down any highway in America and find a grapefruit - a guy needs to be smarter and more determined to get lean.
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In a mood of faith and hope my work goes on. A ream of fresh paper lies on my desk waiting for the next book. I am a writer and I take up my pen to write.
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One thing about being a celebrity that I learned a long time ago was that I pretty much gave up the right to fair treatment.
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We cannot guarantee that a humanitarian catastrophe of the extent of the Holocaust will not happen again. On the contrary, we witness a catalogue of atrocities every day in wars across the globe.
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I’ll never forget my very first [SNL] show. I had a card in my changing room from Kristen Wiig. It just had a heart on the inside, and she’d written “Have fun.” That always stayed with me.
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When I work a game as an analyst, all I do is look at the game like a coach.
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The killing of innocent people is a sin.
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What is the relationship between spirituality and ethical practice? Since love and compassion and similar qualities all, by definition, presume some level of concern for others' well-being, they presume ethical restraint. We cannot be loving and compassionate unless at the same time we curb our own harmful impulses and desires.
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To fear death is nothing other than to think oneself wise when one is not. For it is to think one knows what one does not know. No one knows whether death may not even turn out to be the greatest blessings of human beings. And yet people fear it as if they knew for certain it is the greatest evil.
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The love that gushes for all is the real elixir of life - the fountain of bodily longevity. It is the lack of this that always produces the feeling of age.
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Perhaps I have managed some sort of longevity because I haven't won the lead roles.
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I am at war... with the principal personage of traditional philosophy, that abstract subject who masquerades as everyone and anyone, but is really a male subject in disguise.
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I believe in love, but I'm not sitting around waiting for it. I buy houses. I travel. I take jobs on mountaintops in Transylvania... I know that happiness comes in many ways and if you spend your life hoping to be found by or to find a significant other, you're going to miss out on all that stuff. And that's what makes you special and makes your life rich.
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All systems require myths for their longevity.
