Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni, Jr. Quotes
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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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[To write poems] I think it's important to do research, and research mostly is going to come from books, so all of your reading is potentially helpful to your poetry.
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I move on feeling and have learned to distrust those who don't.
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The unwillingness to try is worse than any failure.
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The catchword I use with my classes is: The authority of the writer always overcomes the skepticism of the reader.
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VISIBILITY - You've got to find a way to make people know you're there
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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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If you were a pure bolt of fire-cutting the skies I'd touch you-risking my life-not because I'm brave or strong, but because I'm fascinated by what the outcome would be.
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I used to go up to her house. She lived upstate [in New York] and I lived in Manhattan; you're living in a lot of noise and my career was being built. For me to spend time with Nina [Simone] is to spend a lot of quiet time.
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We love because it's the only true adventure.
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We obviously need the truth. We're living in a country of lies.
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For most of my life, I've thought of myself as pretty cool.
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If you are sitting there waiting for someone to tell you how wonderful you are, you'll never get anything done. Women need to get over being women. I'm tired of that socialization of women; that we are always supposed to be sitting around pleasing somebody.
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I do not understand why any poet or writer would run for office; that's a different sense of who you are. I'm just a poet. I am as truthful as I can be. That makes me an artist. I heed the people; I do not lead the people.
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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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I think speeches and fruit should always be fresh.
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Writers ... I think ... live on that fine line between insanity and genius.
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What's the difference between dragging a black man behind a truck in Jasper, Texas, and beating a white boy to death in Wyoming because he's gay?
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Poetry is the most informative of all of the arts because everything comes down to poetry. No matter what it is we are describing, ultimately we use either a metaphor; or we say "that's poetry in motion." You drink a glass of wine and say, "that's poetry in a bottle." Everything is poetry, so I think we come down to emotional information. And that's what poetry conveys.
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A lot of people refuse to do things because they don't want to go naked... . We as black people, we as people, we as the human species have got to get used to the fact we're not going to be right most of the time, not even when our intentions are good. We've got to go naked and see what happens.
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His headstone said FREE AT LAST, FREE AT LAST But death is a slave's freedom We seek the freedom of free men And the construction of a world Where Martin Luther King could have lived and preached nonviolence.
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I am ever fascinated by the human experience and by, actually, human beings.
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In the name of peace They waged the wars ain't they got no shame
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I am a huge fan of the Black woman. I never hesitate to recommend her when times are bad or things go wrong.