Quotes from Nikki Giovanni

In order to have a happy ending, in order to be triumphant, in order to be heroic, you have to tell your own story. The women's movement knows that; black people know that; brown people know that; yellow people know that. You have to be able to tell your own story in order to show that you are worthy--that you belong.

It is called education because it is learned. You do not have to have had an experience in order to sympathize or empathize with the subject. That is why books are written: so that we do not have to do the same things. We learn from experience, true; but we also learn from empathy." A Theory of Patience

people say, "I didn't ask to be born," I think we did, and that's why we're here. We are here, and we have to do something nurturing that we respect before we go. We must. It is more interesting, more complicated, more intellectually demanding and more morally demanding to love somebody, to take care of somebody, to make one other person feel good.

If you don't understand your past, you can't transcend it, you might repeat it, you don't understand half of your life. Knowledge is what's important, you know? Not the erasure, but the confrontation of it.

I share with the painters the desire To put a three-dimensional picture On a one-dimensional surface from Cotton Candy on a Rainy Day

poetry is motion graceful as a fawn gentle as a teardrop strong like the eye finding peace in a crowded room

FOR SONIA SANCHEZ

I'm told by my young friends that experience is much more important than books. Of course Ben Franklin had something to say about experience and fools, but even Franklin thought that a fool would learn by his experience. That has proven false in the modern world. Some people are simply unwilling to learn under any circumstances, which maybe, even then, wouldn't be so bad if they weren't so damned proud of it.

do the rosa parks say no no do the rosa parks throw your hand in the air do the rosa parks say ... no no do the rosa parks tell them: that ain't fair

what this decade will be known for there is no doubt it is loneliness

I am always lonely for things I've never had and people I've never been.

We look, most humans, for a way to be warm and safe; for a haven for our bodies when, once fire was discovered and clothes invented, when once we understood why the squirrels moved seeds around and what to call the plant the jaguar got giggly off of, when once we no longer worried about being eaten by other mammals or each other we looked for meaning with this life we were given.

Poems are not advertisements braying For the good life They have serious work to do Birthing people burying people Celebrating joy mourning loss

The main advantage about being over thirty is you no longer have to pretend you have a date on Friday night or even, lo and behold, that you want one. You can now easily say to yourself, I hope no one wants to ask me to do anything because I am so looking forward to a hot tub and a midnight snack.

If now isn't a good time for the truth, I don't see when we'll get to it.

Why would there be a destination when life itself is a journey? You go not to get there but to be there.

No matter what else is wrong in the world a book will take you away from it.

Writing for the gallery is something that a writer must resist no matter who he is. You know the writers that are writing for their audience because they write the same book over and over again with the sort of cute things their readership likes. Serious writers write things that compel them, new challenges, new situations, and a new landscape that they have not been in before.

I think you always write what you love. Whether it's your grandmother or gourmet cooking or mountains and rivers. Sunsets kissing the tallest building or chipmunks scattering off to bed. I like the quiet. And I like the sound of the quiet. I'm a mountain girl. I listen and make lists of what I hear.

All mistakes teach us something, so there are, in reality, no mistakes.

This country is a land mass that could be called anything, and for people to act like this is some kind of sacred territory is an insanity. It's just a bunch of people trying to live together, and if we're not going to be part of a dream of equality--a part of a dream of that which is the best of us, the idea that people help one another--if we're not going to do that, then this land mass doesn't any more deserve to be revered than anything else.

hearing C-flat against an F-minor humming the lullaby to the rhythm of you reading that silly novel you try to complete each night I rest in your rest while the day snuggles in and sings me to sleep 'After the Day

I think that, in reality, there is something wrong with human beings, and unless we are willing to face the fact that something is really wrong with human beings, unless we are willing to face the fact that somewhere in our imaginations we are evil, vicious people, it is not going to work.

I always thought that would be really neat if black people ever got control of the United States we would, of course, tear down some of the statues because we just don't like them...like all of Richmond would probably not have a statue standing.