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And like an unfaithful mate, once a car has let you down you never sort of trust it again.
Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni, Jr. -
Iife/personality must be taken as a total entity. All of your life is all of your life, and no one incident stands alone.
Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni, Jr.
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I love you because no two snowflakes are alike, and it is possible, if you stand tippy-toe, to walk between the raindrops.
Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni, Jr. -
Schools should serve breakfast, lunch and an afternoon snack. No sugared drinks, no fast type food.
Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni, Jr. -
Black love is Black wealth and they'll probably talk about my hard childhood and never understand that all the while I was quite happy
Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni, Jr. -
In law school they teach you that everything is a contract; well, in poetry everything is a narrative.
Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni, Jr. -
The poet can only write the poems; it takes the reader to complete the meaning.
Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni, Jr. -
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.
Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni, Jr.
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You must invent your own games and teach us old ones how to play.
Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni, Jr. -
I don't have a life-style, I have a life.
Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni, Jr. -
I used to dream militant dreams of taking over america to show these whitefolks how it should be done i used to dream radical dreams of blowing everyone away with my perceptive powers of correct analysis i even used to think that i'd be the one to stop the riot and negotiate the peace then i awoke & dug that if i dreamed natural dreams of being a natural woman doing what a woman does when she's natural i would have a revolution.
Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni, Jr. -
Fanatics are, for one thing, boring and, for another, unreliable. They tend to burn out just when you need them.
Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni, Jr. -
Facts are only tools to gain control over yourself and other people.
Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni, Jr. -
School should be eleven months of the year.
Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni, Jr.
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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.
Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni, Jr. -
The trip to Mars can only be understood through Black Americans. I say, the trip to Mars can only be understood through Black Americans.
Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni, Jr. -
I am totally fascinated by people and our history as I understand and continue to explore it. People have so much to give and so far to go and yet we have given and gone a great distance. It's really just interesting to ask: why not? And see where that takes me.
Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni, Jr. -
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.
Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni, Jr. -
Follow your image as far as you can no matter how useless you think it is. Push yourself.
Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni, Jr. -
I'm an old storyteller. I tell the story. It's about the story.
Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni, Jr.
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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
Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni, Jr. -
We must invest in tomorrow. And pay our teachers for teaching as we pay our coaches for coaching.
Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni, Jr. -
We are less lonely when we connect. Art is connection.
Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni, Jr. -
We just didn't put any pressure on each other, and I think that everybody needs somebody, and I didn't do it to try to do it; it's what we [with Nina Simone] were to each other.
Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni, Jr.