Quote

Who I really am keeps surprising me.

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
Surprising
Keeps
Really

More quotes by Nikki Giovanni

Image
We have a world to conquer...one person at a time...starting with ourselves.
Nikki Giovanni
Image
There are some things we do simply because the doing is a success.
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
Don't want to be near you for the thoughts we share but the words we never have to speak.
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
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
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
Black love is black wealth
Nikki Giovanni
Image
There are things you stand up for because it’s right.
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
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 am proud of the hip hop generation. They are good business people and, actually, good people.
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
We are better than we think and not yet what we want to be.
Nikki Giovanni
Image
School buildings should be opened and used twenty four hours a day.
Nikki Giovanni
Image
Now, everything I do, I do because I want to. And I believe the best is yet to come.
Nikki Giovanni
Image
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
Image
The nature of tragedy and accident is that we cannot predict.
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