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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

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Rita Dove
Age: 72
Born: 1952
Born: August 28
Essayist
Poet
Professor
Writer
Akron
Ohio
Rita Frances Dove
Really
Anyone
Never
Write
Think
Else
Yield
Thinking
Anything
Dealing
Reason
Reasons
Matter
Subject
Writing
Subjects
Going
Ought

More quotes by Rita Dove

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I change jobs like drinking water ... And as I grow accustomed to the new flavor of a drink I regard as delicious, yes, vital, something fades, life balks. So I break camp I shed skins.
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I was pirouette and flourish, I was filigree and flame. How could I count my blessings when I didn't know their names?
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If I begin writing a poem that means I'm intrigued in some way by whatever it's about and that if I'm not trying to find something new and pushing the envelope in the poem I can't expect my reader to be particularly excited about it either.
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If you can't be free, be a mystery.
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I carry a notebook with me everywhere. But that's only the first step.
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Sometimes a word is found so right it trembles at the slightest explanation.
Rita Dove
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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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Being true to yourself really means being true to all the complexities of the human spirit.
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The American Dream is a phrase we'll have to wrestle with all of our lives. It means a lot of things to different people. I think we're redefining it now
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I think children have talent and insight, but it gets beaten out of them.
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There are times in life when, instead of complaining, you do something about your complaints.
Rita Dove
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I believe people may have a predisposition for artistic creativity. It doesn't mean they're going to make it.
Rita Dove
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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
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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.
Rita Dove
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At the very beginning when I begin writing a poem I try not to think of the audience or anyone at all except for trying to get at the very center of what is driving that poem. In a way it's like analyzing myself.
Rita Dove
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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.
Rita Dove
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What writing does is to reveal.
Rita Dove
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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
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The library is an arena of possibility, opening both a window into the soul and a door onto the world.
Rita Dove
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For many years, I thought a poem was a whisper overheard, not an aria heard.
Rita Dove