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I think reading Shakespeare's plays when I was young was extremely important. He had the ability to make utter strangers come alive.

Rita Dove

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Rita Dove
Age: 72
Born: 1952
Born: August 28
Essayist
Poet
Professor
Writer
Akron
Ohio
Rita Frances Dove
Think
Alive
Thinking
Reading
Utter
Ability
Strangers
Young
Resurrection
Come
Shakespeare
Play
Plays
Important
Extremely
Make
Stranger

More quotes by Rita Dove

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For many years, I thought a poem was a whisper overheard, not an aria heard.
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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
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My inspiration comes from everywhere, just walking down the street and I never know where it's going to come from, so I keep a notebook with me at all times and the only criteria for anything making it into that notebook is if it stops me in my tracks for even an instant, if it catches my eye or my ear and I just write it down.
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Instead of trying to come up and pontificate on what literature is, you need to talk with children, to teachers, and make sure they get poetry in the curriculum early.
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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.
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Can it be that even as one grows to fit the space one lives in, one cannot grow until there's space to grow?
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What is ironic is that Allen Ginsberg's importance was in its twilight for so many years that it took his death to bring it to the front page. He electrified an entire world!
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I believe people may have a predisposition for artistic creativity. It doesn't mean they're going to make it.
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I have a high guilt quotient. A poem can go through as many as 50 or 60 drafts. It can take from a day to two years - or longer.
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I was appointed Poet Laureate. It came totally out of the blue because most Poet Laureates had been considerably older than I. It was not something that I even had begun to dream about!
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Courage has nothing to do with our determination to be great. It has to do with what we decide in that moment when we are called upon to be more.
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I loved to read, but I always thought that the dream was too far away. The person who had written the book was a god, it wasn't a person.
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There are times in life when, instead of complaining, you do something about your complaints.
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Libraries are where it all begins.
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I think children have talent and insight, but it gets beaten out of them.
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The joy of working at something to find out what it means to me is what I grew up with.
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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.
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The sound of the mandolin is a very curious sound because it's cheerful and melancholy at the same time, and I think it comes from that shadow string, the double strings.
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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.
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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.
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