Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Nikki Giovanni
Age: 81
Born: 1943
Born: June 7
Poet
Teacher
Writer
Knoxville
Tennessee
Yolande Cornelia Giovanni
Jr
Groups
Praises
Single
Intact
Pretty
Praise
Black
Group
Women
Identity
West
However
Shaky
Anybody
Derives

More quotes by Nikki Giovanni

Image
Baseball is already the world's most tranquil sport. It is probably the only active sport where you are not seriously required to be alive to play.
Nikki Giovanni
Image
Who I really am keeps surprising me.
Nikki Giovanni
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
The catchword I use with my classes is: The authority of the writer always overcomes the skepticism of the reader.
Nikki Giovanni
Image
I am totally fascinated by people and our history as I understand and continue to explore it. People have so much to give and so far to go and yet we have given and gone a great distance. It's really just interesting to ask: why not? And see where that takes me.
Nikki Giovanni
Image
I am ever fascinated by the human experience and by, actually, human beings.
Nikki Giovanni
Image
Some say we are responsible for those we love. Others know we are responsible for those who love us.
Nikki Giovanni
Image
You must be unintimidated by your own thoughts because if you write with someone looking over you shoulder, you'll never write.
Nikki Giovanni
Image
If now isn't a good time for the truth I don't see when we'll get to it.
Nikki Giovanni
Image
If you don't understand yourself you don't understand anybody else.
Nikki Giovanni
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Follow your image as far as you can no matter how useless you think it is. Push yourself.
Nikki Giovanni
Image
God knows it's a sign of a really sick mind to see grown people, adults with responsibilities, wearing class rings.
Nikki Giovanni
Image
We are better than we think and not yet what we want to be.
Nikki Giovanni
Image
go barefoot and be warm all the time not only when you go to bed and sleep
Nikki Giovanni