Quote

We are less lonely when we connect. Art is connection.

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
Less
Art
Connect
Connection
Connections
Lonely

More quotes by Nikki Giovanni

Image
We obviously need the truth. We're living in a country of lies.
Nikki Giovanni
Image
I always loved English because whatever human beings are, we are storytellers. It is our stories that give a light to the future. When I went to college I became a history major because history is such a wonderful story of who we think we are. English is much more a story of who we really are.
Nikki Giovanni
Image
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
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
I’ve not learned the acceptable way of saying you fascinate me...I’ve not even learned how to say I like you without frightening people away-
Nikki Giovanni
Image
[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
Image
If now isn't a good time for the truth I don't see when we'll get to it.
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 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
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
Image
A lot of people refuse to do things because they don't want to go naked, don't want to go without guarantee. But that's what's got to happen. You go naked until you die.
Nikki Giovanni
Image
We love because it's the only true adventure.
Nikki Giovanni
Image
I think that too many strangers were in her [Nina Simone's] life, and not enough people that she knew and loved.
Nikki Giovanni
Image
It is not who you attend school with but who controls the school you attend.
Nikki Giovanni
Image
God knows it's a sign of a really sick mind to see grown people, adults with responsibilities, wearing class rings.
Nikki Giovanni
Image
Who I am really keeps surprising me.
Nikki Giovanni
Image
You must be unintimidated by your own thoughts because if you write with someone looking over you shoulder, you'll never write.
Nikki Giovanni
Image
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
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
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