Quotes from Rita Dove

don't think you can ever forget her don't even try she's not going to budge no choice but to grant her space crown her with sky for she is one of the many and she is each of us

Since she's discovered men would rather drown than nibble, she does just fine.

Women invented misery, but we don't understand it.

I've never stopped wanting to cross the equator, or touch an elk's horns, or sing Tosca or screw James Dean in a field of wheat. To hell with wisdom. They're all wrong: I'll never be through with my life.

When we are touched by something it's as if we're being brushed by an angel's wings.

Against Self-Pity It gets you nowhere but deeper into your own shit--pure misery a luxury one never learns to enjoy.

Our situation is intolerable, but what's worse is to sit here and do nothing.

Nothing is too small. Nothing is too, quote-unquote, ordinary or insignificant. Those are the things that make up the measure of our days, and they're the things that sustain us. And they're the things that certainly can become worthy of poetry.

There is not going to be any change unless we can begin to talk about any little fear, any little hatred, any little bias that we might have and to admit that all human beings have them.

To those inclined toward kindness, I say Come out of your houses drumming. All others, beware: I have discarded my smile but not my teeth.

Iedereen wil dat wonderkinderen mislukken. Dat maakt onze eigen middelmatigheid beter te verdragen.

PITHOS Climb into a jar and live for a while. Chill earth. No stars in this stone sky. You have ceased to ache. Your spine is a flower.

The house, shut up like a pocket watch, those tight hearts breathing inside— she could never invent them.

For many years, I thought a poem was a whisper overheard, not an aria heard.

As an African-American, as a woman, I think that I've been sensitized to the way in which history privileges the white male and the way in which certain aspects of history, the things that we are taught in school, the things that are handed down, never, never entered the picture though they might have been very important.

There are distinct duties of a poet laureate. I plan a reading series at the Library of Congress and advise the librarian. The rest is how I want to promote poetry.

I see a resurgence of interest in poetry. I am less optimistic about the prospects for the arts when it comes to federal funding.

Without imagination we can go nowhere. And imagination is not restricted to the arts. Every scientist I have met who has been a success has had to imagine.

It really wasn't until I was in college when I began to write more and more, and I realized I was scheduling my entire life around my writing

It's the combination of the intimate and the public that I find so exciting about being poet laureate.

When we are touched by something it's as if we're being brushed by an angel's wings.

There are times in life when, instead of complaining, you do something about your complaints.

All of us have moments in our childhood where we come alive for the first time. And we go back to those moments and think, This is when I became myself.

I thought, after the Pulitzer, at least nothing will surprise me quite that much in my life. And another one happened. It was quite amazing.