Nikki Giovanni Quotes (28 Quotes)

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

When you are skinning your customers, you should leave some skin on to grow again so that you can skin them again.

It is not who you attend school with but who controls the school you attend.

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

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.

We love because it's the only true adventure.

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

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

I really don't think life is about the I-could-have-beens. Life is only about the I-tried-to-do. I don't mind the failure but I can't imagine that I'd forgive myself if I didn't try.

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

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

Sacred cows make very poor gladiators.

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.

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 non-violence

Kevin Powell is pushing to bring, as he has so brilliantly done before, the voices of his generation the concerns, the cares, the fears and the fearlessness.

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

She sounds extremely creative, in that she turned historical figures into mythical figures. Obviously, she's absorbing images and metaphors, and shows she's thinking. What more do we want a seven-year-old to do

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

I think one of the nicest things that we created as a generation was just the fact that we could say, 'Hey, I don't like white people.'

She doesn't have a lot of attitude. She was going about her business, and she was within her rights to be where she was. She wasn't trying to lead. She simply said, 'Enough. Here I stand.' I think people need to know that.

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.

It's not a ladder we're climbing, it's literature we're producing. . . . We cannot possibly leave it to history as a discipline nor to sociology nor science nor economics to tell the story of our people.

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.

If now isn't a good time for the truth I don't see when we'll get to it.

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

We write because we believe the human spirit cannot be tamed and should not be trained.

There is always something to do. There are hungry people to feed, naked people to clothe, sick people to comfort and make well. And while I don't expect you to save the world I do think it's not asking too much for you to love those with whom you sleep, share the happiness of those whom you call friend, engage those among you who are visionary and remove from your live those who offer you depression, despair and disrespect.

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