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The joy of working at something to find out what it means to me is what I grew up with.

Rita Dove

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Rita Dove
Age: 72
Born: 1952
Born: August 28
Essayist
Poet
Professor
Writer
Akron
Ohio
Rita Frances Dove
Joy
Grew
Working
Means
Find
Mean
Something

More quotes by 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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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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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 carry a notebook with me everywhere. But that's only the first step.
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I think children have talent and insight, but it gets beaten out of them.
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Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.
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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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There are times in life when, instead of complaining, you do something about your complaints.
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The library is an arena of possibility, opening both a window into the soul and a door onto the world.
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If only the sun-drenched celebrities are being noticed and worshiped, then our children are going to have a tough time seeing the value in the shadows, where the thinkers, probers and scientists are keeping society together.
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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
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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.
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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Sometimes a word is found so right it trembles at the slightest explanation.
Rita Dove
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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.
Rita Dove
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If we really want to be full and generous in spirit, we have no choice but to trust at some level.
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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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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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If you can't be free, be a mystery.
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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.
Rita Dove