Nikki Giovanni
Black Poetry is not for Black People...it is for everybodyCollection: People
If I can't do what I want to do, then my job is to not do what I want to do. It's not the same thing, but it's the best thing I can do.Collection: Jobs
[To write poems] I think it's important to do research, and research mostly is going to come from books, so all of your reading is potentially helpful to your poetry.Collection: Book
I move on feeling and have learned to distrust those who don't.Collection: Moving
I am of the generation of segregation. Black Lives Matter is post. I said today, and I will say all the time, "If Nina [Simone] were here, she'd have her Black Lives Matter [T-shirt] on." I think they're great kids. They don't need me or anybody else to tell them what to do.Collection: Kids
There are some things we do simply because the doing is a success.Collection: Success
Poems don't have to rhyme... Poems are about beauty and emotion; in other words poems are about feelings.Collection: Feelings
We are less lonely when we connect. Art is connection.Collection: Lonely
I’ve not learned the acceptable way of saying you fascinate me...I’ve not even learned how to say I like you without frightening people away-Collection: I Like You
Violence is like money in the bank; it's only helpful if you don't have to use it.Collection: Use
BEFORE YOU JUMP OFF A BRIDGE OR HANG YOURSELF OR BE UNHAPPY PLEASE CONSIDER: LIVE FOR YOURSELF; THOSE WHO HATE YOU HAVE NO PURCHASECollection: Hate
I always loved English because whatever human beings are, we are storytellers. It is our stories that give a light to the future. When I went to college I became a history major because history is such a wonderful story of who we think we are. English is much more a story of who we really are.Collection: College
School buildings should be opened and used twenty four hours a day.Collection: School
What's the difference between dragging a black man behind a truck in Jasper, Texas, and beating a white boy to death in Wyoming because he's gay?Collection: Gay
you know a person is having a severe personality crisis if you see a high school class ring on a finger beyond the first semester in college. Male or female. It's a big sign saying nothing has mattered to my life since senior year.Collection: Senior
If you were a pure bolt of fire-cutting the skies I'd touch you-risking my life-not because I'm brave or strong, but because I'm fascinated by what the outcome would be.Collection: Strong
Baseball is already the world's most tranquil sport. It is probably the only active sport where you are not seriously required to be alive to play.Collection: Sports
We black women are the single group in the West intact. And anybody can see we're pretty shaky. We are, however (all praises), the only group that derives its identity from itself.Collection: Black
Schools should be integrated by race and by class.Collection: School
War is not a jobs program.Collection: Jobs
Photographers direct the eye toward a particular object. We who write, one hopes, are directing the heart and the soul.Collection: Writing
We must invest in tomorrow. And pay our teachers for teaching as we pay our coaches for coaching.Collection: Teacher
Nina Simone's music is incredibly honest. That's like saying, "Why does Jesus' word still stay around?" It's incredibly honest and it's good.Collection: Jesus
Writing is a conversation with reading; a dialogue with thinking. All conversations with older people contain repetition. Some of the ideas mean a lot to me, just interesting, so I both embrace and attack the ideas because I found them, well, delightful.Collection: Reading
Nothing improves your writing, I think, as much as your keeping writing.Collection: Writing
If you're a writer, the answer to everything is yes.Collection: Answers
The only advice [for new writers and poets] I can offer is to be yourself: not the self someone else wants you to be, but the self you are. Enjoy yourself and your life. But most of all travel and eat. That's how we learn.Collection: Being Yourself
I am honest; I try to be truthful. I like people and wish us well. We are not always deserving of our own best wishes.Collection: People
If you're creating a slave situation, you would almost never bring women. And if we look at Slavery for example, we look at the Greeks and the Romans, right? It was always men. They never brought any women. Because women carry the seeds of the revolution, right? And if you have the men by themselves, then you can do what the French did with the Blackfeet, which is breed them out.Collection: Men
His headstone said FREE AT LAST, FREE AT LAST But death is a slave's freedom We seek the freedom of free men And the construction of a world Where Martin Luther King could have lived and preached nonviolence.Collection: Kings
I have not tried to tell the people anything. I have shared my views with the people but I have not tried to lead or correct them, assuming they need correction.Collection: Views
Poets can tell the truth as they see it. It’s the author’s story, the author’s voice.Collection: Voice
Storytelling is how history is passed. It's what our ancestors did, it's what everybody's done. It has to come back into a story because otherwise, it's stuck in this book and it's boring and it's academic and I'm not against intelligence and I'm not against education, I don't want to be misunderstood, but we have tell the stories to our young people a little bit early and history gives us a lot of things.Collection: Book
It is not who you attend school with but who controls the school you attend.Collection: Education
You have to use what you have in order to get what you need and the people can not be rich unless somebody is rich. The Hip-Hop generation has carried more people with it than any other enterprise Black Americans have had.Collection: Order
When younger, I thought one of the particulars of being "Homo sapiens" was to communicate. I have not learned not to, though I am cautious when I try.Collection: Communication
I appreciate my my sleep In sleep my conversation is witty My home is dusted My office work is up to date The dog is even well behaved And food is on the table on time But then when I'm asleep I don't have you to clutter and confuse My hungry heartCollection: Dog
Don't want to be near you for the thoughts we share but the words we never have to speak.Collection: African American
I’m a big fan of history—applying the lessons as well as the joys and sadness. If we pay attention, we would see how we affect each other. In terms of time, we are not that far from one another. If we were to look back a century, it would seem like a long time; but, if we look at it by decades then it’s only 10 years, and by generations it’s only five.Collection: Sadness
Writers ... I think ... live on that fine line between insanity and genius.Collection: Thinking
[My] Books are like puppies and children: you love each one for different reasons. I don't actually have a favorite because, if I were honest, I'm always more excited about what is coming.Collection: Children
Floating to shore...riding a low moon...on a slow cloud.Collection: Moon
I wish that she had had a black loon because I don't think that Nina [Simone] did. I have always had - I've been very fortunate - a group of little old ladies that I love and who love me, and who turned and to whom I turn at different times.Collection: Thinking
To write poems, I think it’s important to do research, and research mostly is going to come from books, so all of your reading is potentially helpful to your poetry.Collection: Reading
If you were a pure bolt of fire-cutting the skies I’d touch you-risking my life-not because I’m brave or strong, but because I’m fascinated by what the outcome would be.Collection: Strong
I hope that, reading ‘Rosa,’ people will remember their own family and friends and talk about what they did and did not do.Collection: Reading