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

We all have our muses. My grandmother and my mother are the people I write for. I'll never have to worry about who buys my work, or who likes it, and who doesn't. The people who I want to be proud of me already are.

Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni, Jr.

• Writing
• Mother
• Worry
• Grandmother

• Previous
• Next

Quotes to Explore

• I like the way hip-hop is now. It's grown up enough so that it can get involved with politics if it feels like it.

  

  Nas
  • Up
  • Politics
  • Now

• There is an expression now that is commonly used about these so-called internal conflicts which are not really internal, because they have connections to the outside world.

  

  Lakhdar Brahimi
  • World
  • Now
  • Expression

• Some people ask, 'How do you attract the young and so many different people when your poetry is complicated and different?' I say, 'My accomplishment is that my readers trust me and accept my suggestions for change.'

  

  Mahmoud Darwish
  • People
  • Different
  • Change

• There are no opportune times for a penalty, and this is not one of those times.

  

  Jack Youngblood
  • Times
  • Penalty
  • Those

• You know, I hate to sound self-involved, but I feel like I haven't peaked yet.

  

  Q-Tip
  • You
  • Hate
  • Know

• I have big hands. I can't do the touch-screen thing. I'm a button guy. I want to press buttons.

  

  J. B. Smoove
  • Guy
  • Want
  • Hands

• Manuscript: something submitted in haste and returned at leisure.

  

  Oliver Herford
  • Something
  • Leisure
  • Haste

• Iraq did not spontaneously opt for disarmament. They did it as part of a ceasefire, so they were forced to do it, otherwise the war might have gone on. So the motivation has been very different.

  

  Hans Blix
  • Different
  • War
  • motivation

• When I finished the trilogy of 'Pirates of the Caribbean' movies, I had a gear shift and thought, 'I need to take a moment to smell the roses.'

  

  Orlando Bloom
  • Thought
  • Moment
  • Roses

• We who were born were not witnesses to our birth: like death, it is something we are forever after trying to catch sight of.

  

  Rachel Cusk
  • Trying
  • Death
  • Forever

• The mere fact that so many continue to rise, year after year, out of just such conditions as you may think are fatal to your advancement, ought to convince you that you also can conquer your environment.

  

  Orison Swett Marden
  • May
  • Environment
  • Year

• The University of South Carolina has always played a role in my life and the intellectual life of South Carolina.

  

  Pat Conroy
  • Life
  • My Life
  • Intellectual

• Once we understand just how to control genes, we have the potential for spinal cord regeneration, bone regeneration, and so on. It might also give us plumper chickens.

  

  Jack Horner
  • Control
  • Give
  • Potential

• There is no peace because the making of peace is at least as costly as the making of war - at least as exigent, at least as disruptive, at least as liable to bring disgrace and prison and death in its wake.

  

  Daniel Berrigan
  • War
  • Death
  • Peace

• You don't get to the highest levels of the sport without having the basics in order.

  

  Daniel Cormier
  • You
  • Without
  • Basics

• I've definitely become smuttier. When I first started out, I had these aspirations: 'I'm not going to do jokes about anything crude because I'm bigger and better than that.' But then, I don't know... It makes me laugh, so I started doing it.

  

  Jack Whitehall
  • Me
  • Laugh
  • Jokes

• I want to be different and have a good story. If it's a good story, then everybody is trying to tell it, everybody is better for it, and it's just more fun.

  

  Garrett Dillahunt
  • Good
  • Different
  • Trying

• Dried porcini add a substantial, deep flavour to otherwise more neutral vegetables. I use them in risottos, mashed roots and winter soups.

  

  Yotam Ottolenghi
  • Deep
  • Winter
  • Roots

• Any beast can cry over the misfortunes of its own child. It takes a mensch to weep for others' children.

  

  Sam Levenson
  • Children
  • Child
  • Beast

• Mos Def is a name that I built and cultivated over the years, it's a name that the streets taught me, a figure of speech that was given to me by the culture and by my environment, and I feel I've done quite a bit with that name. [But] it's time to expand and move on.

  

  Yasiin Bey Black Star
  • Done
  • Culture
  • Moving

• I think that the history of rock could be recycled in a different way and brought back into focus without the luggage that comes along with it.

  

  David Bowie
  • Different
  • Thinking
  • Focus

• There is a childlike side in the work of the Dadaists, Klee, Miró, Calder and Picasso. I am trying to make things that are very, very serious, and what comes out of it is things that are quite friendly, gay, and sometimes even amusing. [Chaim] Soutine tried to work like Rembrandt, and yet there is nothing of Rembrandt in his pictures.

  

  Yaacov Agam
  • Work
  • Trying
  • Serious

• Whatever you think of George W. Bush, he left office with his faith intact, and I respect that.

  

  David Gregory
  • Faith
  • Respect

• We all have our muses. My grandmother and my mother are the people I write for. I'll never have to worry about who buys my work, or who likes it, and who doesn't. The people who I want to be proud of me already are.

  

  Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni, Jr.
  • Writing
  • Mother
  • Worry