Quote

We just didn't put any pressure on each other, and I think that everybody needs somebody, and I didn't do it to try to do it it's what we [with Nina Simone] were to each other.

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
Needs
Trying
Think
Thinking
Nina
Pressure
Somebody
Everybody
Didn

More quotes by Nikki Giovanni

Image
I was responding to one thing for the woman I knew, and there's another thing for what did she give, right. She [Nina Simone] was a great teacher.
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
I'm an old storyteller. I tell the story. It's about the story.
Nikki Giovanni
Image
Floating to shore...riding a low moon...on a slow cloud.
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
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.
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
It's really just interesting to ask: why not? And see where that takes me.
Nikki Giovanni
Image
I move on feeling and have learned to distrust those who don't.
Nikki Giovanni
Image
There are some things we do simply because the doing is a success.
Nikki Giovanni
Image
[My] Books are like puppies and children: you love each one for different reasons. I don't actually have a favorite because, if I were honest, I'm always more excited about what is coming.
Nikki Giovanni
Image
The catchword I use with my classes is: The authority of the writer always overcomes the skepticism of the reader.
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
Art is not for the cultivated taste. It is to cultivate taste.
Nikki Giovanni
Image
Fanatics are, for one thing, boring and, for another, unreliable. They tend to burn out just when you need them.
Nikki Giovanni
Image
We are better than we think and not yet what we want to be.
Nikki Giovanni
Image
I am proud of the hip hop generation. They are good business people and, actually, good people.
Nikki Giovanni
Image
We obviously need the truth. We're living in a country of lies.
Nikki Giovanni
Image
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
Image
I am so hip even my errors are correct
Nikki Giovanni