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Who I am really keeps surprising me.

Nikki Giovanni

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Nikki Giovanni
Age: 81
Born: 1943
Born: June 7
Poet
Teacher
Writer
Knoxville
Tennessee
Yolande Cornelia Giovanni
Jr
Surprising
Keeps
Really

More quotes by Nikki Giovanni

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My work is a part of me and I know it. I have no reason to try to pick one part of me out from the rest. I only see my work, or rather I should say I see my work only telling my part of the human experience.
Nikki Giovanni
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I am of the generation of segregation. Black Lives Matter is post. I said today, and I will say all the time, If Nina [Simone] were here, she'd have her Black Lives Matter [T-shirt] on. I think they're great kids. They don't need me or anybody else to tell them what to do.
Nikki Giovanni
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You're only as good as your last book.
Nikki Giovanni
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I don't have a life-style, I have a life.
Nikki Giovanni
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There are some things we do simply because the doing is a success.
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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If I could come back as anything - I'd be a bird, first, but definitely the command key is my second choice.
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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School buildings should be opened and used twenty four hours a day.
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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I am ever fascinated by the human experience and by, actually, human beings.
Nikki Giovanni
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We all have our muses. My grandmother and my mother are the people I write for. I'll never have to worry about who buys my work, or who likes it, and who doesn't. The people who I want to be proud of me already are.
Nikki Giovanni
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I always loved English because whatever human beings are, we are storytellers. It is our stories that give a light to the future. When I went to college I became a history major because history is such a wonderful story of who we think we are. English is much more a story of who we really are.
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 were a pure bolt of fire-cutting the skies I'd touch you-risking my life-not because I'm brave or strong, but because I'm fascinated by what the outcome would be.
Nikki Giovanni
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Rage is to writers what water is to fish.
Nikki Giovanni
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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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It is not who you attend school with but who controls the school you attend.
Nikki Giovanni
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Floating to shore...riding a low moon...on a slow cloud.
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