Nikki Giovanni Quotes

#1. Art is not for the cultivated taste. It is to cultivate taste.

Nikki Giovanni

#2. You must invent your own games and teach us old ones how to play.

Nikki Giovanni

#3. 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

#4. Life is a process where people mix and match, fall apart and come back together.

Nikki Giovanni

#5. Black love is black wealth

Nikki Giovanni

#6. We are less lonely when we connect. Art is connection.

Nikki Giovanni

#7. The ability to take pride in your own work is one of the hallmarks of sanity.

Nikki Giovanni

#8. The only way you can grow is to let yourself make mistakes and create contradictions. As we learn new things, some of our old attitudes will change.

Nikki Giovanni

#9. History is wonderful. We have so much we can learn if we would quit making ideology out of history, and just deal with what happened.

Nikki Giovanni

#10. The world is not a pleasant place to be without someone to hold and be held by.

Nikki Giovanni

#11. 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.

Nikki Giovanni

#12. [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.

Nikki Giovanni

#13. If you're a writer, the answer to everything is yes.

Nikki Giovanni

#14. A lot of people refuse to do things ...

Nikki Giovanni

#15. 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.

Nikki Giovanni

#16. If you are sitting there waiting for someone to tell you how wonderful you are, you'll never get anything done. Women need to get over being women. I'm tired of that socialization of women; that we are always supposed to be sitting around pleasing somebody.

Nikki Giovanni

#17. Now, everything I do, I do because I want to. And I believe the best is yet to come.

Nikki Giovanni

#18. If you don't understand yourself you don't understand anybody else.

Nikki Giovanni

#19. Rage is to writers what water is to fish.

Nikki Giovanni

#20. 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
from Cotton Candy on a Rainy Day

Nikki Giovanni

#21. Poetry is music though, unfortunately, not all music is poetry. Because music has other carriers to take its message - beats, lyrics, singers, bass players - anyone in music can rise to make a major statement but in poetry there are only words to do the work. And they do sometimes have to sweat.

Nikki Giovanni

#22. Poetry is motion graceful
as a fawn
gentle as a teardrop
strong like the eye
finding peace in a crowded room

Nikki Giovanni

#23. Death is a slave's freedom.

Nikki Giovanni

#24. I think it's the strength of her music, using art to make a statement. I think it really is. It was not a cheap gift. The gift was an expensive gift for Nina [Simone]. Diamonds are expensive. Her music was expensive. She paid for it, but I think it's her greatest gift.

Nikki Giovanni

#25. 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.

Nikki Giovanni

#26. Show me someone not full of herself and I'll show you a hungry person.

Nikki Giovanni

#27. I knew Stokely [Carmichael] and them, but when you got to that, you saw that Nina Simone started to take up their burden. She started to preach for them. She was taking on the burden of "I want to tell the people."

Nikki Giovanni

#28. I think that too many strangers were in Nina Simone life, and not enough people that she knew and loved.

Nikki Giovanni

#29. Though I worship nothing (save myself)
You were my savior - so be it
And it was
Perhaps not never more or ever after
But after all - once you were mine

Nikki Giovanni

#30. It is not unusual to sift
through ashes
and find an unburnt picture

Nikki Giovanni

#31. 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

#32. I would put books on par with chocolate, because a good book is delicious.

Nikki Giovanni

#33. 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

#34. Everything will change. The only question is growing up or decaying.

Nikki Giovanni

#35. If I could come back as anything - I'd be a bird, first, but definitely the command key is my second choice.

Nikki Giovanni

#36. We are strong enough to stand tall tearlessly, we are brave enough to bend to cry, and we are sad enough to know that we must laugh again.

Nikki Giovanni

#37. I move on feeling and have learned to distrust those who don't.

Nikki Giovanni

#38. A lot of people refuse to do things because they don't want to go naked, don't want to go without guarantee. But that's what's got to happen. You go naked until you die

Nikki Giovanni

#39. All systems require myths for their longevity.

Nikki Giovanni

#40. If you know what you're talking about, or if you feel that you do, the reader will believe you.

Nikki Giovanni

#41. I always like summer
best

Nikki Giovanni

#42. I spend a lot of time learning about bird watching.

Nikki Giovanni

#43. I hope that, reading 'Rosa,' people will remember their own family and friends and talk about what they did and did not do.

Nikki Giovanni

#44. No one needs to teach you to be mean; we need to be taught to be kind.

Nikki Giovanni

#45. Some say we are responsible for those we love. Others know we are responsible for those who love us.

Nikki Giovanni

#46. Who I am really keeps surprising me.

Nikki Giovanni

#47. I was responding to one thing for the woman I knew, and there's another thing for what did she give, right. She [Nina Simone] was a great teacher.

Nikki Giovanni

#48. For most of my life, I've thought of myself as pretty cool.

Nikki Giovanni

#49. Nothing is easy to the unwilling.

Nikki Giovanni

#50. Iife/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

#51. 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.

Nikki Giovanni

#52. 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.

Nikki Giovanni

#53. There are things you stand up for because it's right.

Nikki Giovanni

#54. FOR SONIA SANCHEZ

Nikki Giovanni

#55. The trip to Mars can only be understood through Black Americans. I say, the trip to Mars can only be understood through Black Americans.

Nikki Giovanni

#56. I'm just totally fascinated by people.

Nikki Giovanni

#57. Favorite poems are like favorite children. We definitely have them but we never tell as the others would have their feelings hurt.

Nikki Giovanni

#58. There're two people in the world that are not likeable: a master and a slave.

Nikki Giovanni

#59. 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.

Nikki Giovanni

#60. Black Americans should be given credit for finding probably the perfect weapon; the weapon of the song. And that song continues. Most holocausts don't, so they have this bitterness left over. The phenomenon of the world, as far as Black Americans are considered, is that we are not a bitter people.

Nikki Giovanni

#61. I am totally fascinated by people and our history as I understand and continue to explore it. People have so much to give and so far to go and yet we have given and gone a great distance. It's really just interesting to ask: why not? And see where that takes me.

Nikki Giovanni

#62. Photographers direct the eye toward a particular object. We who write, one hopes, are directing the heart and the soul.

Nikki Giovanni

#63. Go barefoot
and be warm
all the time
not only when you go to bed
and sleep

Nikki Giovanni

#64. Everyone understands that love comes in many different packages and is used in many different ways. You cannot love beyond your years, nor can you fail to love beneath them.In other words, I think you get the love you need when you open your heart.

Nikki Giovanni

#65. 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-

Nikki Giovanni

#66. I don't have a life-style, I have a life.

Nikki Giovanni

#67. A lot of people resist transition and therefore never allow themselves to enjoy who they are. Embrace the change, no matter what it is; once you do, you can learn about the new world you're in and take advantage of it.

Nikki Giovanni

#68. White people really deal more with God and black people with Jesus.

Nikki Giovanni

#69. But nonviolence was never for the oppressor; it was for the oppressed.

Nikki Giovanni

#70. I had a really nice childhood; I had great parents. I earned my allowance by washing dishes, and in the summer I earned my allowance by working in daddy's garden.

Nikki Giovanni

#71. The more you love someone the more he wants from you and the less you have to give since you've already given him your love.

Nikki Giovanni

#72. Daddy says the world is a drum tight and hard and i told him i'm gonna beat out my own rhythm

Nikki Giovanni

#73. 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

#74. Libraries ... house our dreams.

Nikki Giovanni

#75. I just think she was a wonderful woman. What I think of when I think of Nina [Simone] is someone that I could relate to, who didn't want anything from me, that could relate to me because I didn't want anything from her. It was nice.

Nikki Giovanni

#76. Mistakes are a fact of life: It is the response to the error that counts.

Nikki Giovanni

#77. 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.

Nikki Giovanni

#78. Don't want to be near you for the thoughts we share but the words we never have to speak.

Nikki Giovanni

#79. And sometimes I sit down at my typewriter and I think not of someone cause there isn't anyone to think about and i wonder is it worth it

Nikki Giovanni

#80. Life is a marvelous, transitory adventure.

Nikki Giovanni

#81. I appreciate and enjoy my age.

Nikki Giovanni

#82. I'm into my Black Thing
And it's filling all
My empty spots

Nikki Giovanni

#83. If were a shower
I could saturate your hair
Work my way over your lips
Across your shoulders
Around your waist
Through your knees
To the tips of your toes
And back again
Warm wet salty
Sweet

Nikki Giovanni

#84. In the name of peace
They waged the wars
ain't they got no shame

Nikki Giovanni

#85. Art offers sanctuary to everyone willing to open their Hearts as well as their Eyes.

Nikki Giovanni

#86. A white face goes with a white mind. Occasionally a black face goes with a white mind. Very seldom a white face will have a black mind.

Nikki Giovanni

#87. Black Poetry is not for Black People ... it is for everybody

Nikki Giovanni

#88. We have a world to conquer ... one person at a time ... starting with ourselves.

Nikki Giovanni

#89. I am cotton candy on a rainy day
the unrealized dream of an idea unborn

from Cotton Candy on a Rainy Day

Nikki Giovanni

#90. The job of the architect becomes more difficult in this secular age. Where once he had a god to extol, he now has humans like himself; where once he had "he," he now has "she" and "they.

Nikki Giovanni

#91. Because Nina's Simone music is incredibly honest. That's like saying, "Why does Jesus' word still stay around?" It's incredibly honest and it's good.

Nikki Giovanni

#92. We obviously need the truth. We're living in a country of lies.

Nikki Giovanni

#93. Floating to shore ... riding a low moon ... on a slow cloud.

Nikki Giovanni

#94. I am so hip even my errors are correct

Nikki Giovanni

#95. Sacred cows make very poor gladiators.

Nikki Giovanni

#96. Poems don't have to rhyme. Poems are about beauty and emotion; in other words poems are about feelings.

Nikki Giovanni

#97. I like what they're doing. I think they're doing a good job, and I know that a lot of people are upset by them. These are great young men and women, and they're bold, and they are saying to America, "Something's going to change." I'm very proud of them.

Nikki Giovanni

#98. Grant me Love implies
not desire but
Commitment
Commitment accepts Challenge
Challenge embraces Theory
And you and I will get Reason: A way to explore
past actions
and
future dreams

Nikki Giovanni

#99. Poetry and music are very good friends. Like mommies and daddies and strawberries and cream - they go together.

Nikki Giovanni

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

Nikki Giovanni