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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
Grew
Working
Means
Find
Mean
Something
Joy

More quotes by Rita Dove

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Equality and self-determination should never be divided in the name of religious or ideological fervor.
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For many years, I thought a poem was a whisper overheard, not an aria heard.
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My father is a chemist, my mother was a homemaker. My parents instilled in us the feeling that learning was the most exciting thing that could happen to you, and it never ends.
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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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People write me from all over the country, asking me, and sometimes even telling me, what they think a poet laureate should do. I found that immensely valuable.
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I'm never quite sure how the poem is going to resolve itself and that I'm always in some way surprised. I make a discovery in a poem as I write it.
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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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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 think children have talent and insight, but it gets beaten out of them.
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Don't be so fast, you're all you've got.
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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 writing does is to reveal.
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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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When we are touched by something it's as if we're being brushed by an angel's wings.
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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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I see a resurgence of interest in poetry. I am less optimistic about the prospects for the arts when it comes to federal funding.
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Being true to yourself really means being true to all the complexities of the human spirit.
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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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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
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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.
Rita Dove