Quote

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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Nikki Giovanni
Age: 81
Born: 1943
Born: June 7
Poet
Teacher
Writer
Knoxville
Tennessee
Yolande Cornelia Giovanni
Jr
Heart
Direct
Toward
Objects
Particular
Photographers
Eye
Directing
Write
Hopes
Soul
Photographer
Writing
Object

More quotes by 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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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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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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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
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A white face goes with a white mind. Occasionally a black face goes with a white mind. Very seldom a white face will have a black mind.
Nikki Giovanni
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Being Black and poor is, I think, radically different from being anything else and poor. Poor, to most Blacks, is a state of mind. Those who accept it are poor those who struggle are middle class.
Nikki Giovanni
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You must be unintimidated by your own thoughts because if you write with someone looking over you shoulder, you'll never write.
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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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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Black Americans should be given credit for finding probably the perfect weapon the weapon of the song. And that song continues. Most holocausts don't, so they have this bitterness left over. The phenomenon of the world, as far as Black Americans are considered, is that we are not a bitter people.
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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We are strong enough to stand tall tearlessly, we are brave enough to bend to cry, and we are sad enough to know that we must laugh again.
Nikki Giovanni
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I have not tried to tell the people anything. I have shared my views with the people but I have not tried to lead or correct them, assuming they need correction.
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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You're only as good as your last book.
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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Language instruction should start in the first grade. Writing, also.
Nikki Giovanni
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If culture was a railroad, I can see the tracks running from the Spirituals to the Hip Hop Nation.
Nikki Giovanni
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Facts are only tools to gain control over yourself and other people.
Nikki Giovanni
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I am ever fascinated by the human experience and by, actually, human beings.
Nikki Giovanni