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
Thinking
Nina
Pressure
Somebody
Everybody
Didn
Needs
Trying
Think

More quotes by 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
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.
Nikki Giovanni
Image
You're only as good as your last book.
Nikki Giovanni
Image
Love is the offspring of spiritual affinity and unless that affinity is created in a moment, it will not be created for years or even generations.
Nikki Giovanni
Image
The nature of tragedy and accident is that we cannot predict.
Nikki Giovanni
Image
Art is not for the cultivated taste. It is to cultivate taste.
Nikki Giovanni
Image
Iife/personality must be taken as a total entity. All of your life is all of your life, and no one incident stands alone.
Nikki Giovanni
Image
Language instruction should start in the first grade. Writing, also.
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
We are better than we think and not yet what we want to be.
Nikki Giovanni
Image
I'm an old storyteller. I tell the story. It's about the story.
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
Black love is black wealth
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
White people really deal more with God and black people with Jesus.
Nikki Giovanni
Image
Facts are only tools to gain control over yourself and other people.
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 am a huge fan of the Black woman. I never hesitate to recommend her when times are bad or things go wrong.
Nikki Giovanni
Image
Follow your image as far as you can no matter how useless you think it is. Push yourself.
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