Nikki Giovanni Quotes - Page 5

Nina Simone's music is incredibly honest. That's like saying, "Why does Jesus' word still stay around?" It's incredibly honest and it's good.

Nothing improves your writing, I think, as much as your keeping writing.

I think one of the nicest things that we created as a generation was just the fact that we could say, 'Hey, I don't like white people.'

If you're a writer, the answer to everything is yes.

The only advice [for new writers and poets] I can offer is to be yourself: not the self someone else wants you to be, but the self you are. Enjoy yourself and your life. But most of all travel and eat. That's how we learn.

I am honest; I try to be truthful. I like people and wish us well. We are not always deserving of our own best wishes.

His headstone said FREE AT LAST, FREE AT LAST But death is a slave's freedom We seek the freedom of free men And the construction of a world Where Martin Luther King could have lived and preached nonviolence.

If you're creating a slave situation, you would almost never bring women. And if we look at Slavery for example, we look at the Greeks and the Romans, right? It was always men. They never brought any women. Because women carry the seeds of the revolution, right? And if you have the men by themselves, then you can do what the French did with the Blackfeet, which is breed them out.

I have not tried to tell the people anything. I have shared my views with the people but I have not tried to lead or correct them, assuming they need correction.

We eat up artists like there's going to be a famine at the end.

I appreciate and enjoy my age.

Poets can tell the truth as they see it. It’s the author’s story, the author’s voice.

Storytelling is how history is passed. It's what our ancestors did, it's what everybody's done. It has to come back into a story because otherwise, it's stuck in this book and it's boring and it's academic and I'm not against intelligence and I'm not against education, I don't want to be misunderstood, but we have tell the stories to our young people a little bit early and history gives us a lot of things.

It is not who you attend school with but who controls the school you attend.

You have to use what you have in order to get what you need and the people can not be rich unless somebody is rich. The Hip-Hop generation has carried more people with it than any other enterprise Black Americans have had.

When younger, I thought one of the particulars of being "Homo sapiens" was to communicate. I have not learned not to, though I am cautious when I try.

I appreciate my my sleep In sleep my conversation is witty My home is dusted My office work is up to date The dog is even well behaved And food is on the table on time But then when I'm asleep I don't have you to clutter and confuse My hungry heart

Don't want to be near you for the thoughts we share but the words we never have to speak.

I’m a big fan of history—applying the lessons as well as the joys and sadness. If we pay attention, we would see how we affect each other. In terms of time, we are not that far from one another. If we were to look back a century, it would seem like a long time; but, if we look at it by decades then it’s only 10 years, and by generations it’s only five.

Writers ... I think ... live on that fine line between insanity and genius.

[My] Books are like puppies and children: you love each one for different reasons. I don't actually have a favorite because, if I were honest, I'm always more excited about what is coming.

Floating to shore...riding a low moon...on a slow cloud.

White people really deal more with God and black people with Jesus.

I wish that she had had a black loon because I don't think that Nina [Simone] did. I have always had - I've been very fortunate - a group of little old ladies that I love and who love me, and who turned and to whom I turn at different times.

I am proud of the hip hop generation. They are good business people and, actually, good people.