Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni, Jr. (Nikki Giovanni) Quotes
Quotes to Explore
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It took me a while and a lot of hard times to figure out my purpose, I am so happy with my life. I just want to help make other people happy, too.
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I didn't audition for 'SNL.' I sent in a tape to 'SNL' the year before I started writing there, but I got the job there through doing stand-up on Fallon.
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Pursuit and seduction are the essence of sexuality. It's part of the sizzle.
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I did not have three thousand pairs of shoes, I had one thousand and sixty.
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Chicken and horse meat are the best foods for weightlifters, and good food is important.
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I am writing a book called 'The History of Australia in Hundred Objects.' It's of things we have invented in Australia. And you know, some of them are amazing. We invented the clapper boards used in films. We invented those cranes - those big long cranes used on construction sites.
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The idea of going on tour for the rest of my life with old works is not that exciting. As an artist I definitely think the work in future is going to be better than the work in the past, otherwise why do it?
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I'm a very competitive person. You won't change things unless you are prepared to fight, even if you don't win. But I do hate losing.
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When I was first elected I got 50% of the vote in '77 in the general election. In '81 I got 75%. In '85, I got 78%. No mayor has ever gotten that high a vote. So it was not an issue. Except for people who were very hostile to me. They thought they would injure me.
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Film is my hobby, so I will work well through the night to develop films, whatever film I'm doing or dream projects I have.
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I went to the studio of Fischli Weiss, and it was magical. I thought: 'This is what I want to do with my life; I want to work with artists and be useful to them.' I was magnetically attracted.
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Laws are to be enforced justly but firmly, with an iron hand. This is the case anywhere, even in a family.
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By adversity are wrought the greatest works of admiration, and all the fair examples of renown, out of distress and misery are grown.
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To make theater out of real life, you need to catch dialogue when it happens.
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Every vote should carry a serial number, so that responsibility for harmful or careless use of the vote can be traced. Concealed voting should be outlawed.
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There are many women with children under five who want to work and who lack affordable, high-quality child care.
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There are those who seem to feel they have no choice about being jerks in the present because they had a crappy childhood. Well, that's the definition of childhood; nobody gets out alive. You either get stronger from what you experience, or you turn it into a crutch, an excuse, a dodge.
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If my parents ever had to ground me, they didn't really know what that would mean, because I was inside most of the time anyway.
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Glamour is something you can't bear to be without once you're used to it.
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I went down for a week with the Houston Marshals. I didn't know that they hated paperwork as much as I hated it. They loathe it, man. They want to be in their cars catching the bad guys. They don't want to be filling out paperwork about the bad guys, you know, and the ones they've caught.
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The grim fact is that we prepare for war like precocious giants, and for peace like retarded pygmies.
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It’s a poor atom blaster that won’t point both ways.
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I created the Dikembe Mutombo Foundation back in 1997 for the purpose of going in and improving the living conditions of my people on the African continent, especially in the Democratic Republic of Congo where I came from. Out first mission was to go and build a new hospital. Our next mission was to build a school.
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School should be eleven months of the year.
