Quotes from Rita Dove

What writing does is to reveal.

Libraries are where it all begins.

Going to the library was the one place we got to go without asking for permission. And they let us choose what we wanted to read. It was a feeling of having a book be mine entirely.

My father is a chemist, my mother was a homemaker. My parents instilled in us the feeling that learning was the most exciting thing that could happen to you, and it never ends.

I try to show what it is about language and music that enthralls, because I think those are the two elements of poetry.

The poetry that sustains me is when I feel that, for a minute, the clouds have parted and I've seen ecstasy or something

By making us stop for a moment, poetry gives us an opportunity to think about ourselves as human beings on this planet and what we mean to each other.

Poetry connects you to yourself, to the self that doesn't know how to talk or negotiate.

I loved to read, but I always thought that the dream was too far away. The person who had written the book was a god, it wasn't a person.

I've always been intrigued by the way history works, the way we decide what is mentioned.

I have a high guilt quotient. A poem can go through as many as 50 or 60 drafts. It can take from a day to two years-or longer.

I keep the drafts of each poem in color-coded folders. I pick up the folders according to how I feel about that color that day.

I make a discovery in a poem as I write it.

I think that you certainly don't have to be aged and travel the world to write a poem.

Being Poet Laureate made me realize I was capable of a larger voice. There is a more public utterance I can make as a poet.

My favorite poets may not be your bread and butter. I have more favorite poems than favorite poets.

I think one of the things that people tend to forget is that poets do write out of life. It isn't some set piece that then gets put up on the shelf, but that the impetus, the real instigation for poetry is everything that's happening around us.

To practice your scales, so to speak, in order play the symphony, is what you have to do as a young poet.

You have to imagine it possible before you can see something. You can have the evidence right in front of you, but if you can't imagine something that has never existed before, it's impossible.

Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.

I believe people may have a predisposition for artistic creativity. It doesn't mean they're going to make it.

I was apprehensive. I feared every time I talked about poetry, it would be filtered through the lens of race, sex, and age.

We wire the sky for comfort; we thread it through our lungs for a perfect fit. We've arranged this calm, though it is constantly unraveling. Where does it go then, atmosphere suckered up an invisible flue? How can we know where it goes?

I can't wear it on my sleeve, or tell you from the bottom of it how I feel. Here, it's all yours, now— but you'll have to take me, too.