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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

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Nikki Giovanni
Age: 81
Born: 1943
Born: June 7
Poet
Teacher
Writer
Knoxville
Tennessee
Yolande Cornelia Giovanni
Jr
Time
Career
Built
Quiet
Upstate
Spend
Nina
Careers
Manhattan
Living
Noise
House
York
Used
Lived

More quotes by Nikki Giovanni

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Follow your image as far as you can no matter how useless you think it is. Push yourself.
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Now, everything I do, I do because I want to. And I believe the best is yet to come.
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You must be unintimidated by your own thoughts.
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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.
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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.
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A lot of people resist transition and therefore never allow themselves to enjoy who they are. Embrace the change, no matter what it is once you do, you can learn about the new world you're in and take advantage of it.
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go barefoot and be warm all the time not only when you go to bed and sleep
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Facts are only tools to gain control over yourself and other people.
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Iife/personality must be taken as a total entity. All of your life is all of your life, and no one incident stands alone.
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Libraries...house our dreams.
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Art is not for the cultivated taste. It is to cultivate taste.
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Schools should serve breakfast, lunch and an afternoon snack. No sugared drinks, no fast type food.
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The only way you can grow is to let yourself make mistakes and create contradictions. As we learn new things, some of our old attitudes will change.
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There are some things we do simply because the doing is a success.
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My dream is a red dress Above my knees High-heel red sandals And me coming over the top The music booming Hi Howie I will say With a lovely smile I don't want to play the game I want to be it.
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God knows it's a sign of a really sick mind to see grown people, adults with responsibilities, wearing class rings.
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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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.
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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
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Poetry is the most mistaught subject in any school because we teach poetry by form and not by content.
Nikki Giovanni