Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni, Jr. (Nikki Giovanni) Quotes
Style has a profound meaning to Black Americans. If we can’t drive, we will invent walks and the world will envy the dexterity of our feet. If we can’t have ham, we will boil chitterlings; if we are given rotten peaches, we will make cobblers; if given scraps, we will make quilts; take away our drums, and we will clap our hands. We prove the human spirit will prevail. We will take what we have to make what we need. We need confidence in our knowledge of who we are.
Quotes to Explore
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'Murder in the First' takes 12 episodes to explore the crime and the issues surrounding it, all in the hopes of answering the question, 'How did we get to this point?'
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I would love it if people could look at chubby folks with all of our curves, bumps and ridges and just say 'She's beautiful' just like that. You don't have to get on a treadmill as long as your blood pressure is under control and you eat healthy, God bless.
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I don't mind talking about 'what might have been,' but I am not one to doubt or regret most of my decisions.
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I was in the military, and then I went to university to study biology.
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Your private life is really very important for you. You know, all of us, you know.
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I made myself famous by writing 'songs' and lyrics about the beauty of the things I did and ugliness, too.
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I studied the lives of jazz singers who would tour Europe, and... what I learned was life was big ride for them. They'd seen the dark side of humanity... but touring the world playing jazz, it was a truly carefree way of living. A great escapism, if you like.
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I'm very interested in the idea of a large group of people who come together quite suddenly, but not illogically, for reasons that could not have been anticipated.
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Getting into Sundance is such a big platform for a director.
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Before Booker T. Washington, we have small business owners but we do not have a philosopher of black entrepreneurship, and that's what Washington was.
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Boning is a pain, but it makes such a majestic chicken.
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'EIla Enchanted' began in a marvelous writing course at New York City's The New School.
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I have this really high priority on happiness and finding something to be happy about.
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I am strictly against remaking a movie.
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Rand Paul does not like being compared to his father Ron any more than sons named Bush like to dance in their father's shadow, but the crucial difference is that while the Bushes all hail from the relative mainstream of the GOP, the Pauls have an ideological tributary virtually to themselves.
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If you get lazy when you're onstage, it shows.
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I don't want to collect Indian art, though pots and beadwork and blankets made by Indians remain the most beautiful art objects in the American West, in my opinion.
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One must always draw, draw with the eyes, when one cannot draw with a pencil.
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What a life! True life is elsewhere. We are not in the world.
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The unique and supreme voluptuousness of love lies in the certainty of committing evil. And men and women know from birth that in evil is found all sensual delight.
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What people tell me they take away from my books is that they can shape their lives, they can achieve their own dreams. And certainly that's what I want them to take away.
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Even after facing jail, Martin Luther King, Jr. courageously and boldly spoke out against racial inequality.
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I always like to write the songs, and they get turned loose into the world, and who knows what happens to them. That's the joy of being a songwriter. You get to hear what other people do, interpretation-wise.
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Style has a profound meaning to Black Americans. If we can’t drive, we will invent walks and the world will envy the dexterity of our feet. If we can’t have ham, we will boil chitterlings; if we are given rotten peaches, we will make cobblers; if given scraps, we will make quilts; take away our drums, and we will clap our hands. We prove the human spirit will prevail. We will take what we have to make what we need. We need confidence in our knowledge of who we are.
