Quote

I do not feel inhibited or bound by what I am. That does not mean that I have never had bad scenes relating to being Black and/or a woman, it means that other people’s craziness has not managed to make me crazy.

Lucille Clifton

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Lucille Clifton
Age: 73 †
Born: 1936
Born: June 27
Died: 2010
Died: February 13
Author
Poet
University Teacher
Writer
Depew
New York
Thelma Lucille Sayles
Thelma Lucille Clifton
Mean
Crazy
Relating
Make
Woman
Craziness
Never
Means
Managed
People
Culture
Scenes
Black
Bound
Doe
Bounds
Feel
Diversity
Feels
Scene
Inhibited

More quotes by Lucille Clifton

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Come celebrate with me that every day something has tried to kill me and has failed.
Lucille Clifton
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In the bigger scheme of things the universe is not asking us to do something, the universe is asking us to be something. And that's a whole different thing.
Lucille Clifton
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Even when the universe made it quite clear to me that I was mistaken in my certainties ... I did not break. The shattering of my sureties did not shatter me.
Lucille Clifton
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telling the truth about children's lives is radical.
Lucille Clifton
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What they call you is one thing. What you answer to is something else.
Lucille Clifton
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I am a black woman poet and I sound like one.
Lucille Clifton
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they ask me to remember but they want me to remember their memories and I keep on remembering mine
Lucille Clifton
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The end of a thing, is never the end, something is always being born like a year of a baby.
Lucille Clifton
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Say it clear, and it will be beautiful.
Lucille Clifton
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To be a good poet, you must care more about the writing, than the writer.
Lucille Clifton
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I am running into a new year and the old years blow back like a wind that I catch in my hair like strong fingers like all my old promises and it will be hard to let go of what I said to myself about myself when I was sixteen and twenty-six and thirty-six but I am running into a new year and I beg what i love and I leave to forgive me.
Lucille Clifton
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You cannot play for safety and make art.
Lucille Clifton
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We cannot create what we can't imagine.
Lucille Clifton
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Intellect doesn't translate across cultures intuition does.
Lucille Clifton
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the lesson of the falling leaves the leaves believe such letting go is love such love is faith such faith is grace such grace is god i agree with the leaves
Lucille Clifton
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may you kiss the wind then turn from it certain that it will love your back
Lucille Clifton
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I think that were beginning to remember that the first poets didn't come out of a classroom, that poetry began when somebody walked off of a savanna or out of a cave and looked up at the sky with wonder and said, Ahhh. That was the first poem.
Lucille Clifton
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Tell the truth... maybe just to see clearly, as clearly as possible.
Lucille Clifton
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People wish to be poets more than they wish to write poetry, and that's a mistake. One should wish to celebrate more than one wishes to be celebrated.
Lucille Clifton