Nikki Giovanni Quotes

78 Sourced Quotes

America may not be the best nation on earth, but it has conceived loftier ideals and dreamed higher dreams than any other nation. America is a heterogeneous nation of many different people of different races, religions, and creeds. Should this experiment go forth and prosper, we will have offered humans a new way to look at life; should it fail, we will simply go the way of all failed civilizations.

Nikki Giovanni
It's a sex object if you're pretty
and no love
or love and no sex if you're fat

Nikki Giovanni
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.

Nikki Giovanni
I would not reject
my strength
though its source
is not choice
but responsibility

Nikki Giovanni
One stands, in fact, in awe of the Constitution of the United States, though it is an idea and not quite a reality.

Nikki Giovanni
I wrote a good omelet... and ate a hot poem...
after loving you Buttoned my car... and drove my coat home... in the
rain... after loving you

Nikki Giovanni
We didn't write a constitution... we live one... We didn't say "We the People"... we are one... We didn't have to add... as an afterthought... "Under God"... We turn our faces to the rising sun... knowing... a New Day... is always... beginning

Nikki Giovanni
I just wanta say just gotta say something
bout those beautiful beautiful beautiful outasight
black men
with they afros
walking down they street
is the same ol danger
but a brand new pleasure.

Nikki Giovanni
You my children of battle, are your heroes
You must invent your own games and teach us old ones
how to play

Nikki Giovanni
If loneliness were a grape
the wine would be vintage
If it were a wood
the furniture would be mahogany
But since it is life it is
Cotton Candy
on a rainy day
The sweet soft essence
of possibility
Never quite maturing

Nikki Giovanni
I resent people who say writers write from experience. Writers don't write from experience, though many are hesitant to admit that they don't. I want to be clear about this. If you wrote from experience, you'd get maybe one book, maybe three poems. Writers write from empathy.

Nikki Giovanni
You must invent your own games and teach us old ones how to play.

Nikki Giovanni
Most of us love from our need to love not
because we find someone deserving.

Nikki Giovanni
Art is not for the cultivated taste. It is to cultivate taste.

Nikki Giovanni
I think speeches and fruit should always be fresh.

Nikki Giovanni
We are all more than our experiences
And less than our dreams.

Nikki Giovanni
I grow old though pleased with my memories The tasks I can no longer complete Are balanced by the love of the tasks gone past I offer no apology only this plea: When I am frayed and strained and drizzle at the end Please someone cut a square and put me in a quilt That I might keep some child warm And some old person with no one else to talk to Will hear my whispers And cuddle near

Nikki Giovanni
We eat up artists like there's going to be a famine at the end.

Nikki Giovanni
I gotta say something
about those beautiful outasight
black men
with they afros
walking down they street
is the same old danger
but a brand new pleasure.

Nikki Giovanni
I love you because no two snowflakes are alike, and it is possible, if you stand tippy-toe, to walk between the raindrops.

Nikki Giovanni
I'm glad I understand that while language is a gift, listening is a responsibility.

Nikki Giovanni
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.

Nikki Giovanni
Fanatics are, for one thing, boring and, for another, unreliable. They tend to burn out just when you need them.

Nikki Giovanni
I'm a modern woman
ain't gonna let this get me down
gonna take my master charge
and get everything in town

Nikki Giovanni
Deal with yourself as a individual, worthy of respect and make everyone else deal with you the same way.

Nikki Giovanni
There's a reason we lose a lot its not our game
and we don't know how to score.

Nikki Giovanni
Life/personality must be taken as a total entity. All of your life is all of your life, and no one incident stands alone.

Nikki Giovanni
Poetry is the most mistaught subject in any school because we teach poetry by form and not by content.

Nikki Giovanni
God knows it's a sign of a really sick mind to see grown people, adults with responsibilities, wearing class rings.

Nikki Giovanni
It was good for the virgin mary
it was good enough for mary
it was good for the virgin mary
its good enough for me.

Nikki Giovanni