Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni, Jr. Quotes
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Poetry is like air. It's one of the necessary things. Everyone benefits from poetry. And as you know, poetry is international. There are only two things that are truly international, poetry and wine.
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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.
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I was responding to one thing for the woman I knew, and there's another thing for what did she give, right. She [Nina Simone] was a great teacher.
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I'm an old storyteller. I tell the story. It's about the story.
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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."
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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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But nonviolence was never for the oppressor; it was for the oppressed.
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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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Don't want to be near you for the thoughts we share but the words we never have to speak.
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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.
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One stands, in fact, in awe of the Constitution of the United States, though it is an idea and not quite a reality.
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I would put books on par with chocolate, because a good book is delicious.
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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're only as good as your last book.
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It's not a ladder we're climbing, it's literature we're producing. . . . We cannot possibly leave it to history as a discipline nor to sociology nor science nor economics to tell the story of our people.
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I think it's the strength of her music, using art to make a statement. I think it really is. It was not a cheap gift. The gift was an expensive gift for Nina [Simone]. Diamonds are expensive. Her music was expensive. She paid for it, but I think it's her greatest gift.
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Hip-hop is a cultural expression - it's embracing.
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There're two people in the world that are not likeable: a master and a slave.
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Young people coming up who are having difficulty with their so-called celebrity need to get back into their lives. It's your life and you can't let the fact that you do something pretty good take away the joy of it.
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A lot is yet to be enjoyed. I'd like to stomp grapes for wine. Go to Antarctica. Have dinner with Venus Williams who is the greatest tennis player ever.
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The only way you can grow is to let yourself make mistakes and create contradictions. As we learn new things, some of our old attitudes will change.
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I want to be clear about this. If you wrote from experience, you'd get maybe one book, maybe three poems. Writers write from empathy.
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A white face goes with a white mind. Occasionally a black face goes with a white mind. Very seldom a white face will have a black mind.
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The catchword I use with my classes is: The authority of the writer always overcomes the skepticism of the reader.