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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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Nikki Giovanni
Age: 81
Born: 1943
Born: June 7
Poet
Teacher
Writer
Knoxville
Tennessee
Yolande Cornelia Giovanni
Jr
Free
Many
Make
People
Harriet
Determined
Loves
Everybody
Freedom

More quotes by Nikki Giovanni

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The catchword I use with my classes is: The authority of the writer always overcomes the skepticism of the reader.
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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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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We are less lonely when we connect. Art is connection.
Nikki Giovanni
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A lot of people resist transition and therefore never allow themselves to enjoy who they are. Embrace the change, no matter what it is once you do, you can learn about the new world you're in and take advantage of it.
Nikki Giovanni
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School buildings should be opened and used twenty four hours a day.
Nikki Giovanni
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Language instruction should start in the first grade. Writing, also.
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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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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It is not who you attend school with but who controls the school you attend.
Nikki Giovanni
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The trip to Mars can only be understood through Black Americans. I say, the trip to Mars can only be understood through Black Americans.
Nikki Giovanni
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Sacred cows make very poor gladiators.
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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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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It's not a ladder we're climbing, it's literature we're producing. . . . We cannot possibly leave it to history as a discipline nor to sociology nor science nor economics to tell the story of our people.
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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We have a world to conquer...one person at a time...starting with ourselves.
Nikki Giovanni
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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
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God knows it's a sign of a really sick mind to see grown people, adults with responsibilities, wearing class rings.
Nikki Giovanni