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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

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I don't have a life-style, I have a life.
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Sacred cows make very poor gladiators.
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When younger, I thought one of the particulars of being Homo sapiens was to communicate. I have not learned not to, though I am cautious when I try.
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Floating to shore...riding a low moon...on a slow cloud.
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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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Photographers direct the eye toward a particular object. We who write, one hopes, are directing the heart and the soul.
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White people really deal more with God and black people with Jesus.
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We are better than we think and not yet what we want to be.
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If culture was a railroad, I can see the tracks running from the Spirituals to the Hip Hop Nation.
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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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The trip to Mars can only be understood through Black Americans. I say, the trip to Mars can only be understood through Black Americans.
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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.
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I am of the generation of segregation. Black Lives Matter is post. I said today, and I will say all the time, If Nina [Simone] were here, she'd have her Black Lives Matter [T-shirt] on. I think they're great kids. They don't need me or anybody else to tell them what to do.
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We must invest in tomorrow. And pay our teachers for teaching as we pay our coaches for coaching.
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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.
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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.
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We believe 'Peter Rabbit' because Beatrix Potter believes it. You have to.
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I think speeches and fruit should always be fresh.
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I am proud of the hip hop generation. They are good business people and, actually, good people.
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You must be unintimidated by your own thoughts because if you write with someone looking over you shoulder, you'll never write.
Nikki Giovanni