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I don't have a life-style, I have a life.

Nikki Giovanni

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Nikki Giovanni
Age: 81
Born: 1943
Born: June 7
Poet
Teacher
Writer
Knoxville
Tennessee
Yolande Cornelia Giovanni
Jr
Life
Lifestyle
Style

More quotes by Nikki Giovanni

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There are things you stand up for because it’s right.
Nikki Giovanni
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White people really deal more with God and black people with Jesus.
Nikki Giovanni
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I prefer her [Nina Simone's] jazz period much more so than her folk period.
Nikki Giovanni
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Facts are only tools to gain control over yourself and other people.
Nikki Giovanni
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We black women are the single group in the West intact. And anybody can see we're pretty shaky. We are, however (all praises), the only group that derives its identity from itself.
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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We are better than we think and not yet what we want to be.
Nikki Giovanni
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We [Black people] have always used our creativity to battle and we're not the only ones. Black Americans are certainly leaders in that simply because we were denied education and dealt with enforced illiteracy. But people seem to always forget that literacy is not the only way of learning things or conveying knowledge.
Nikki Giovanni
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Follow your image as far as you can no matter how useless you think it is. Push yourself.
Nikki Giovanni
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Some say we are responsible for those we love. Others know we are responsible for those who love us.
Nikki Giovanni
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I used to go up to her house. She lived upstate [in New York] and I lived in Manhattan you're living in a lot of noise and my career was being built. For me to spend time with Nina [Simone] is to spend a lot of quiet time.
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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A lot of people refuse to do things because they don't want to go naked... . We as black people, we as people, we as the human species have got to get used to the fact we're not going to be right most of the time, not even when our intentions are good. We've got to go naked and see what happens.
Nikki Giovanni
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Everybody that loves freedom loves Harriet Tubman because she was determined not only to be free, but to make free as many people as she could.
Nikki Giovanni
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Language instruction should start in the first grade. Writing, also.
Nikki Giovanni
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Death is a slave's freedom.
Nikki Giovanni
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We must invest in tomorrow. And pay our teachers for teaching as we pay our coaches for coaching.
Nikki Giovanni
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Iife/personality must be taken as a total entity. All of your life is all of your life, and no one incident stands alone.
Nikki Giovanni
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It's really just interesting to ask: why not? And see where that takes me.
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