Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni, Jr. Quotes
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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.
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Storytelling is how history is passed. It's what our ancestors did, it's what everybody's done. It has to come back into a story because otherwise, it's stuck in this book and it's boring and it's academic and I'm not against intelligence and I'm not against education, I don't want to be misunderstood, but we have tell the stories to our young people a little bit early and history gives us a lot of things.
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I don't have a life-style, I have a life.
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In law school they teach you that everything is a contract; well, in poetry everything is a narrative.
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I am honest; I try to be truthful. I like people and wish us well. We are not always deserving of our own best wishes.
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We must invest in tomorrow. And pay our teachers for teaching as we pay our coaches for coaching.
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School should be eleven months of the year.
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I’ve not learned the acceptable way of saying you fascinate me...I’ve not even learned how to say I like you without frightening people away-
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You must invent your own games and teach us old ones how to play.
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you know a person is having a severe personality crisis if you see a high school class ring on a finger beyond the first semester in college. Male or female. It's a big sign saying nothing has mattered to my life since senior year.
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I think one of the nicest things that we created as a generation was just the fact that we could say, 'Hey, I don't like white people.'
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And like an unfaithful mate, once a car has let you down you never sort of trust it again.
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Love is the offspring of spiritual affinity and unless that affinity is created in a moment, it will not be created for years or even generations.
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Sacred cows make very poor gladiators.
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When younger, I thought one of the particulars of being "Homo sapiens" was to communicate. I have not learned not to, though I am cautious when I try.
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I hope that, reading 'Rosa,' people will remember their own family and friends and talk about what they did and did not do.
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The poet can only write the poems; it takes the reader to complete the meaning.
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We are less lonely when we connect. Art is connection.
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Fanatics are, for one thing, boring and, for another, unreliable. They tend to burn out just when you need them.
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The trip to Mars can only be understood through Black Americans. I say, the trip to Mars can only be understood through Black Americans.
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go barefoot and be warm all the time not only when you go to bed and sleep
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I prefer her [Nina Simone's] jazz period much more so than her folk period.
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If i can't have what i want . . . then my job is to want what i've got and be satisfied that at least there is something more to want
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Follow your image as far as you can no matter how useless you think it is. Push yourself.