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Sometimes a word is found so right it trembles at the slightest explanation.

Rita Dove

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Rita Dove
Age: 72
Born: 1952
Born: August 28
Essayist
Poet
Professor
Writer
Akron
Ohio
Rita Frances Dove
Explanation
Word
Found
Right
Sometimes
Trembles
Slightest

More quotes by Rita Dove

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If you can't be free, be a mystery.
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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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Rap is only one end of a whole spectrum of verbal play and virtuosity. Rap is geared for aural pleasure.
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I think that when a poem can move readers across generations and across its specific class or race then it becomes truly classic.
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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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The library is an arena of possibility, opening both a window into the soul and a door onto the world.
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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.
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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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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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I believe people may have a predisposition for artistic creativity. It doesn't mean they're going to make it.
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Don't be so fast, you're all you've got.
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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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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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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.
Rita Dove
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Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.
Rita Dove
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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!
Rita Dove
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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?
Rita Dove
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A good poem is like a bouillon cube. It's concentrated and it nourishes you when you need it.
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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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.
Rita Dove