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We write because we believe the human spirit cannot be tamed and should not be trained.

Nikki Giovanni

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Nikki Giovanni
Age: 81
Born: 1943
Born: June 7
Poet
Teacher
Writer
Knoxville
Tennessee
Yolande Cornelia Giovanni
Jr
Believe
Tamed
Trained
Write
Spirit
Cannot
Human
Humans
Writing

More quotes by Nikki Giovanni

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The only way you can grow is to let yourself make mistakes and create contradictions. As we learn new things, some of our old attitudes will change.
Nikki Giovanni
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I appreciate and enjoy my age.
Nikki Giovanni
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Black Americans should be given credit for finding probably the perfect weapon the weapon of the song. And that song continues. Most holocausts don't, so they have this bitterness left over. The phenomenon of the world, as far as Black Americans are considered, is that we are not a bitter people.
Nikki Giovanni
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I do not understand why any poet or writer would run for office that's a different sense of who you are. I'm just a poet. I am as truthful as I can be. That makes me an artist. I heed the people I do not lead the people.
Nikki Giovanni
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If you don't understand yourself you don't understand anybody else.
Nikki Giovanni
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Favorite poems are like favorite children. We definitely have them but we never tell as the others would have their feelings hurt.
Nikki Giovanni
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Language instruction should start in the first grade. Writing, also.
Nikki Giovanni
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I am a huge fan of the Black woman. I never hesitate to recommend her when times are bad or things go wrong.
Nikki Giovanni
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You must be unintimidated by your own thoughts.
Nikki Giovanni
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I knew Stokely [Carmichael] and them, but when you got to that, you saw that Nina Simone started to take up their burden. She started to preach for them. She was taking on the burden of I want to tell the people.
Nikki Giovanni
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My dream is a red dress Above my knees High-heel red sandals And me coming over the top The music booming Hi Howie I will say With a lovely smile I don't want to play the game I want to be it.
Nikki Giovanni
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I think speeches and fruit should always be fresh.
Nikki Giovanni
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My main strength as a young writer was that I had no fear of making mistakes. I knew I would and I knew I could and would learn from them.
Nikki Giovanni
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You're only as good as your last book.
Nikki Giovanni
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Most of my books are a two-year project. I tend to follow my heart and my mind and research materials where they take me.
Nikki Giovanni
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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-
Nikki Giovanni
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We are less lonely when we connect. Art is connection.
Nikki Giovanni
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I don't have a life-style, I have a life.
Nikki Giovanni
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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.
Nikki Giovanni
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If culture was a railroad, I can see the tracks running from the Spirituals to the Hip Hop Nation.
Nikki Giovanni