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We are better than we think and not yet what we want to be.

Nikki Giovanni

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Nikki Giovanni
Age: 81
Born: 1943
Born: June 7
Poet
Teacher
Writer
Knoxville
Tennessee
Yolande Cornelia Giovanni
Jr
Better
Think
Thinking

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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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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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
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We have a world to conquer...one person at a time...starting with ourselves.
Nikki Giovanni
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A lot is yet to be enjoyed. I'd like to stomp grapes for wine. Go to Antarctica. Have dinner with Venus Williams who is the greatest tennis player ever.
Nikki Giovanni
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and sometimes I sit down at my typewriter and I think not of someone cause there isn't anyone to think about and i wonder is it worth it
Nikki Giovanni
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I think that too many strangers were in her [Nina Simone's] life, and not enough people that she knew and loved.
Nikki Giovanni
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Photographers direct the eye toward a particular object. We who write, one hopes, are directing the heart and the soul.
Nikki Giovanni
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You must be unintimidated by your own thoughts.
Nikki Giovanni
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Now, everything I do, I do because I want to. And I believe the best is yet to come.
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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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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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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Art offers sanctuary to everyone willing to open their Hearts as well as their Eyes.
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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We obviously need the truth. We're living in a country of lies.
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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[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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I am proud of the hip hop generation. They are good business people and, actually, good people.
Nikki Giovanni
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There are some things we do simply because the doing is a success.
Nikki Giovanni