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I don't have a life-style, I have a life.
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 think that too many strangers were in her [Nina Simone's] life, and not enough people that she knew and loved.
Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni, Jr. -
You must be unintimidated by your own thoughts because if you write with someone looking over you shoulder, you'll never write.
Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni, Jr. -
Violence is like money in the bank; it's only helpful if you don't have to use it.
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. -
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. -
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.
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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. -
Deal with yourself as a individual, worthy of respect and make everyone else deal with you the same way.
Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni, Jr. -
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. -
In law school they teach you that everything is a contract; well, in poetry everything is a narrative.
Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni, Jr. -
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.
Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni, Jr.
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I knew Stokely [Carmichael] and them, but when you got to that, you saw that Nina Simone started to take up their burden. She started to preach for them. She was taking on the burden of "I want to tell the people."
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. -
Facts are only tools to gain control over yourself and other people.
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. -
You must invent your own games and teach us old ones how to play.
Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni, Jr.
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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. -
Hip-hop is a cultural expression - it's embracing.
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. -
I prefer her [Nina Simone's] jazz period much more so than her folk period.
Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni, Jr.