Quote

[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

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
Writing
Research
Going
Poetry
Think
Books
Thinking
Reading
Write
Potentially
Book
Poems
Come
Helpful
Important
Mostly

More quotes by Nikki Giovanni

Image
White people really deal more with God and black people with Jesus.
Nikki Giovanni
Image
Everyone understands that love comes in many different packages and is used in many different ways. You cannot love beyond your years, nor can you fail to love beneath them... In other words, I think you get the love you need when you open your heart.
Nikki Giovanni
Image
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
Image
Daddy says the world is a drum tight and hard and I told him I'm gonna beat out my own rhythm.
Nikki Giovanni
Image
Art offers sanctuary to everyone willing to open their Hearts as well as their Eyes.
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
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
Image
If you don't understand yourself you don't understand anybody else.
Nikki Giovanni
Image
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
Image
We are less lonely when we connect. Art is connection.
Nikki Giovanni
Image
Fanatics are, for one thing, boring and, for another, unreliable. They tend to burn out just when you need them.
Nikki Giovanni
Image
We obviously need the truth. We're living in a country of lies.
Nikki Giovanni
Image
Libraries...house our dreams.
Nikki Giovanni
Image
I am proud of the hip hop generation. They are good business people and, actually, good people. It's strange that the only time the major press talks about them is when someone gets killed or does drugs or something yet these are the same press people who made heroes out of the Mafia and other crooks, you know.
Nikki Giovanni
Image
We must invest in tomorrow. And pay our teachers for teaching as we pay our coaches for coaching.
Nikki Giovanni
Image
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
Image
Poetry is the most mistaught subject in any school because we teach poetry by form and not by content.
Nikki Giovanni
Image
If culture was a railroad, I can see the tracks running from the Spirituals to the Hip Hop Nation.
Nikki Giovanni
Image
We all have our muses. My grandmother and my mother are the people I write for. I'll never have to worry about who buys my work, or who likes it, and who doesn't. The people who I want to be proud of me already are.
Nikki Giovanni
Image
Young people coming up who are having difficulty with their so-called celebrity need to get back into their lives. It's your life and you can't let the fact that you do something pretty good take away the joy of it.
Nikki Giovanni