Quote

There are times in life when, instead of complaining, you do something about your complaints.

Rita Dove

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Rita Dove
Age: 72
Born: 1952
Born: August 28
Essayist
Poet
Professor
Writer
Akron
Ohio
Rita Frances Dove
Time
Complainers
Life
Doings
Complaints
Complaining
Motivational
Instead
Times
Something

More quotes by Rita Dove

Image
I see a resurgence of interest in poetry. I am less optimistic about the prospects for the arts when it comes to federal funding.
Rita Dove
Image
I think that when a poem can move readers across generations and across its specific class or race then it becomes truly classic.
Rita Dove
Image
All of us have moments in our childhood where we come alive for the first time. And we go back to those moments and think, This is when I became myself.
Rita Dove
Image
If they don't read, if they don't love reading if they don't find themselves compulsively reading, I don't think they're really a writer
Rita Dove
Image
I've always felt that the poems I've written which have historical context are hopefully not just simply plucking something out of history and saying great, let's write about that. In every case what has happened is that I've become fascinated or haunted by something and couldn't shake it.
Rita Dove
Image
Don't be so fast, you're all you've got.
Rita Dove
Image
We tend to be so bombarded with information, and we move so quickly, that there's a tendency to treat everything on the surface level and process things quickly. This is antithetical to the kind of openness and perception you have to have to be receptive to poetry.poetry seems to exist in a parallel universe outside daily life in America.
Rita Dove
Image
To write for PC reasons, because you think you ought to be dealing with this subject, is never going to yield anything that is really going to matter to anyone else. It has to matter to you.
Rita Dove
Image
I write short stories, and I wrote a play.
Rita Dove
Image
You have to imagine it possible before you can see something. You can have the evidence right in front of you, but if you can't imagine something that has never existed before, it's impossible.
Rita Dove
Image
For years, I had heard about the lack of interest in literature in the U.S. and I had complained about the lack of respect artists got here. In my heart, I failed to understand how people could fail to be moved by art.
Rita Dove
Image
If we really want to be full and generous in spirit, we have no choice but to trust at some level.
Rita Dove
Image
As an African-American, as a woman I think that I've been sensitized to the way in which history privileges the white male and the way in which certain aspects of history, the things that we are taught in school, the things that are handed down never, never entered the picture though they might have been very important.
Rita Dove
Image
We should always do something that makes us feel like a child again. Keep learning, no matter what it is.
Rita Dove
Image
What writing does is to reveal.
Rita Dove
Image
Listen how they say your name. If they can't say that right, there's no way they're going to know how to treat you proper, neither.
Rita Dove
Image
When we are touched by something it's as if we're being brushed by an angel's wings.
Rita Dove
Image
Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.
Rita Dove
Image
One definition of eternity is that we are not alone on this planet, that there are those who've gone before and those who will come, and that there is a community of spirits.
Rita Dove
Image
A good poem is like a bouillon cube. It's concentrated and it nourishes you when you need it.
Rita Dove