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If now isn't a good time for the truth I don't see when we'll get to it.

Nikki Giovanni

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Nikki Giovanni
Age: 81
Born: 1943
Born: June 7
Poet
Teacher
Writer
Knoxville
Tennessee
Yolande Cornelia Giovanni
Jr
Truth
Good
Time

More quotes by Nikki Giovanni

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Fanatics are, for one thing, boring and, for another, unreliable. They tend to burn out just when you need them.
Nikki Giovanni
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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.
Nikki Giovanni
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If I can't do what I want to do, then my job is to not do what I want to do. It's not the same thing, but it's the best thing I can do.
Nikki Giovanni
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Poetry is the most mistaught subject in any school because we teach poetry by form and not by content.
Nikki Giovanni
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I'm an old storyteller. I tell the story. It's about the story.
Nikki Giovanni
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Love is the offspring of spiritual affinity and unless that affinity is created in a moment, it will not be created for years or even generations.
Nikki Giovanni
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White people really deal more with God and black people with Jesus.
Nikki Giovanni
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We just didn't put any pressure on each other, and I think that everybody needs somebody, and I didn't do it to try to do it it's what we [with Nina Simone] were to each other.
Nikki Giovanni
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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.
Nikki Giovanni
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Young people coming up who are having difficulty with their so-called celebrity need to get back into their lives. It's your life and you can't let the fact that you do something pretty good take away the joy of it.
Nikki Giovanni
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Black love is Black wealth and they'll probably talk about my hard childhood and never understand that all the while I was quite happy
Nikki Giovanni
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The job of the architect becomes more difficult in this secular age. Where once he had a god to extol, he now has humans like himself where once he had he, he now has she and they.
Nikki Giovanni
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I was responding to one thing for the woman I knew, and there's another thing for what did she give, right. She [Nina Simone] was a great teacher.
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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Floating to shore...riding a low moon...on a slow cloud.
Nikki Giovanni
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Facts are only tools to gain control over yourself and other people.
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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[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.
Nikki Giovanni
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[To write poems] I think it's important to do research, and research mostly is going to come from books, so all of your reading is potentially helpful to your poetry.
Nikki Giovanni
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We write because we believe the human spirit cannot be tamed and should not be trained.
Nikki Giovanni