Quotes from Rita Dove

I change jobs like drinking water ... And as I grow accustomed to the new flavor of a drink I regard as delicious, yes, vital, something fades, life balks. So I break camp; I shed skins.

The sound of the mandolin is a very curious sound because it's cheerful and melancholy at the same time, and I think it comes from that shadow string, the double strings.

Being true to yourself really means being true to all the complexities of the human spirit.

Equality and self-determination should never be divided in the name of religious or ideological fervor.

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.

The American Dream is a phrase we'll have to wrestle with all of our lives. It means a lot of things to different people. I think we're redefining it now.

I didn't know writers could be real live people, because I never knew any writers.

I was appointed Poet Laureate. It came totally out of the blue because most Poet Laureates had been considerably older than I. It was not something that I even had begun to dream about!

Everybody who's anybody longs to be a tree.

If they don't read, if they don't love reading; if they don't find themselves compulsively reading, I don't think they're really a writer

I think children have talent and insight, but it gets beaten out of them.

I loved to write when I was a child. I wrote, but I always thought it was something that you did as a child, then you put away childish things.

I write short stories, and I wrote a play.

To write for PC reasons, because you think you ought to be dealing with this subject, is never going to yield anything that is really going to matter to anyone else. It has to matter to you.

I prefer to explore the most intimate moments, the smaller, crystallized details we all hinge our lives on.

I think if you put something in a file that says "war poems" or "love poems" that you already restrict the way in which the poem might move.

The joy of working at something to find out what it means to me is what I grew up with.

If we really want to be full and generous in spirit, we have no choice but to trust at some level.

I'm a night person. My best times are midnight to six, actually.

My childhood library was small enough not to be intimidating. And yet I felt the whole world was contained in those two rooms. I could walk any aisle and smell wisdom.

For years, I had heard about the lack of interest in literature in the U.S. and I had complained about it. I failed to understand how people could fail to be moved by art.

It makes me furious to hear haters of all skin colors - especially Christian, Jewish, and Muslim fundamentalists - deride other people because of their different beliefs and lifestyles.

It's unfortunate that sometimes in schools, there's this need to have things quantified and graded.

I grew up in Ohio, where civil-rights accomplishments had already begun to accelerate before Martin Luther King appeared. In hindsight, we know that many people, black and white, were instrumental in changing the Jim Crow status quo on all levels.