Rita Dove Quotes

Courage has nothing to do with our determination to be great. It has to do with what we decide in that moment when we are called upon to be more.

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

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

We should always do something that makes us feel like a child again. Keep learning, no matter what it is.

The library is an arena of possibility, opening both a window into the soul and a door onto the world.

Everybody who's anybody longs to be a tree.

Sometimes a word is found so right it trembles at the slightest explanation.

Poetry connects you to yourself, to the self that doesn't know how to talk or negotiate.

You have to imagine it possible before you can see something. You can have the evidence right in front of you, but if you can't imagine something that has never existed before, it's impossible.

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.

If only the sun-drenched celebrities are being noticed and worshiped, then our children are going to have a tough time seeing the value in the shadows, where the thinkers, probers and scientists are keeping society together.

Listen how they say your name. If they can't say that right, there's no way they're going to know how to treat you proper, neither.

If our children are unable to voice what they mean, no one will know how they feel. If they can’t imagine a different world, they are stumbling through a darkness made all the more sinister by its lack of reference points. For a young person growing up in America’s alienated neighborhoods, there can be no greater empowerment than to dare to speak from the heart — and then to discover that one is not alone in ones feelings.

I've always been intrigued by the way history works, the way we decide what is mentioned.

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.

A good poem is like a bouillon cube. It's concentrated and it nourishes you when you need it.

I wish someone had told me that my stories are really mine to tell. In other words, anything that I think is important or that has moved me has the ability to move somebody else.

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

If we’re going to solve the problems of the world, we have to learn how to talk to one another. Poetry is the language at its essence. It’s the bones and the skeleton of the language. It teaches you, if nothing else, how to choose your words.

By making us stop for a moment, poetry gives us an opportunity to think about ourselves as human beings on this planet and what we mean to each other.

Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.

When I was young, I was older than I am today.

Don't be so fast, you're all you've got.

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

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.