Nikki Giovanni Quotes - Page 4

go barefoot and be warm all the time not only when you go to bed and sleep

I move on feeling and have learned to distrust those who don't.

I am of the generation of segregation. Black Lives Matter is post. I said today, and I will say all the time, "If Nina [Simone] were here, she'd have her Black Lives Matter [T-shirt] on." I think they're great kids. They don't need me or anybody else to tell them what to do.

There are some things we do simply because the doing is a success.

I am totally fascinated by people and our history as I understand and continue to explore it. People have so much to give and so far to go and yet we have given and gone a great distance. It's really just interesting to ask: why not? And see where that takes me.

BEFORE YOU JUMP OFF A BRIDGE OR HANG YOURSELF OR BE UNHAPPY PLEASE CONSIDER: LIVE FOR YOURSELF; THOSE WHO HATE YOU HAVE NO PURCHASE

Poems don't have to rhyme... Poems are about beauty and emotion; in other words poems are about feelings.

We are less lonely when we connect. Art is connection.

I’ve not learned the acceptable way of saying you fascinate me...I’ve not even learned how to say I like you without frightening people away-

Violence is like money in the bank; it's only helpful if you don't have to use it.

I always loved English because whatever human beings are, we are storytellers. It is our stories that give a light to the future. When I went to college I became a history major because history is such a wonderful story of who we think we are. English is much more a story of who we really are.

Sacred cows make very poor gladiators.

School buildings should be opened and used twenty four hours a day.

We must invest in tomorrow. And pay our teachers for teaching as we pay our coaches for coaching.

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?

you know a person is having a severe personality crisis if you see a high school class ring on a finger beyond the first semester in college. Male or female. It's a big sign saying nothing has mattered to my life since senior year.

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.

Baseball is already the world's most tranquil sport. It is probably the only active sport where you are not seriously required to be alive to play.

If I could come back as anything - I'd be a bird, first, but definitely the command key is my second choice.

We black women are the single group in the West intact. And anybody can see we're pretty shaky. We are, however (all praises), the only group that derives its identity from itself.

Schools should be integrated by race and by class.

Hip-hop is a cultural expression - it's embracing.

War is not a jobs program.

Photographers direct the eye toward a particular object. We who write, one hopes, are directing the heart and the soul.

Writing is a conversation with reading; a dialogue with thinking. All conversations with older people contain repetition. Some of the ideas mean a lot to me, just interesting, so I both embrace and attack the ideas because I found them, well, delightful.