Quote

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

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
Rather
Experience
Part
Reason
Human
Pick
Humans
Picks
Trying
Telling
Work
Rest

More quotes by Nikki Giovanni

Image
Schools should serve breakfast, lunch and an afternoon snack. No sugared drinks, no fast type food.
Nikki Giovanni
Image
It's really just interesting to ask: why not? And see where that takes me.
Nikki Giovanni
Image
White people really deal more with God and black people with Jesus.
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
Image
There are some things we do simply because the doing is a success.
Nikki Giovanni
Image
It is not who you attend school with but who controls the school you attend.
Nikki Giovanni
Image
Favorite poems are like favorite children. We definitely have them but we never tell as the others would have their feelings hurt.
Nikki Giovanni
Image
Photographers direct the eye toward a particular object. We who write, one hopes, are directing the heart and the soul.
Nikki Giovanni
Image
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
Image
Rage is to writers what water is to fish.
Nikki Giovanni
Image
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
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
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
Some say we are responsible for those we love. Others know we are responsible for those who love us.
Nikki Giovanni
Image
Libraries...house our dreams.
Nikki Giovanni
Image
If I can't do what I want to do, then my job is to not do what I want to do. It's not the same thing, but it's the best thing I can do.
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
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
If culture was a railroad, I can see the tracks running from the Spirituals to the Hip Hop Nation.
Nikki Giovanni
Image
I appreciate and enjoy my age.
Nikki Giovanni