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You cannot play for safety and make art.

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
Art
Cannot
Play
Make
Safety

More quotes by Lucille Clifton

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I am a black woman poet and I sound like one.
Lucille Clifton
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telling the truth about children's lives is radical.
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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To be a good poet, you must care more about the writing, than the writer.
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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Say it clear, and it will be beautiful.
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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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
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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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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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Intellect doesn't translate across cultures intuition does.
Lucille Clifton
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We cannot create what we can't imagine.
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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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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Tell the truth... maybe just to see clearly, as clearly as possible.
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 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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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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What they call you is one thing. What you answer to is something else.
Lucille Clifton