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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.

Nikki Giovanni

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Nikki Giovanni
Age: 81
Born: 1943
Born: June 7
Poet
Teacher
Writer
Knoxville
Tennessee
Yolande Cornelia Giovanni
Jr
Strength
Would
Writer
Mistake
Knew
Learn
Making
Main
Fear
Mistakes
Young

More quotes by Nikki Giovanni

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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.
Nikki Giovanni
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We love because it's the only true adventure.
Nikki Giovanni
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Who I really am keeps surprising me.
Nikki Giovanni
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Libraries...house our dreams.
Nikki Giovanni
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A lot is yet to be enjoyed. I'd like to stomp grapes for wine. Go to Antarctica. Have dinner with Venus Williams who is the greatest tennis player ever.
Nikki Giovanni
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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.
Nikki Giovanni
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I wish that she had had a black loon because I don't think that Nina [Simone] did. I have always had - I've been very fortunate - a group of little old ladies that I love and who love me, and who turned and to whom I turn at different times.
Nikki Giovanni
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Favorite poems are like favorite children. We definitely have them but we never tell as the others would have their feelings hurt.
Nikki Giovanni
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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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Black love is black wealth
Nikki Giovanni
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I am proud of the hip hop generation. They are good business people and, actually, good people.
Nikki Giovanni
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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.
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
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I appreciate and enjoy my age.
Nikki Giovanni
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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
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Who I am really keeps surprising me.
Nikki Giovanni
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It is not who you attend school with but who controls the school you attend.
Nikki Giovanni
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Photographers direct the eye toward a particular object. We who write, one hopes, are directing the heart and the soul.
Nikki Giovanni
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I am ever fascinated by the human experience and by, actually, human beings.
Nikki Giovanni
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You're only as good as your last book.
Nikki Giovanni