Quotes from Nikki Giovanni

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 heart

Writing is a conversation with reading; a dialogue with thinking.

people say, "I didn't ask to be born," I think we did, and that's why we're here. We are here, and we have to do something nurturing that we respect before we go. We must. It is more interesting, more complicated, more intellectually demanding and more morally demanding to love somebody, to take care of somebody, to make one other person feel good.

Writing for the gallery is something that a writer must resist no matter who he is. You know the writers that are writing for their audience because they write the same book over and over again with the sort of cute things their readership likes. Serious writers write things that compel them, new challenges, new situations, and a new landscape that they have not been in before.

hearing C-flat against an F-minor humming the lullaby to the rhythm of you reading that silly novel you try to complete each night I rest in your rest while the day snuggles in and sings me to sleep 'After the Day

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

The tragic loneliness black women consistently face as we stand before judgmental others—sometimes white, but sometimes black; sometimes male, but sometimes female—demands that we have some wisdom, experience, and some passion with which to combat this abuse.

We in the Black Arts movement, which wasn't really a movement but a group of people who had similar objectives...

People are making the most unbelievable statements about the other based on that kind of insistence that the person who disagrees with you fundamentally can't exist. These are political statements as well as biological and everything else.

I mean, that the New World black woman needs a little of the Old World black woman in her, and the other way around. I don't think that they are completely fulfilled without the other.

it's white male life. The master narrative is whatever ideological script that is being imposed by the people in authority on everybody else. The master fiction. History. It has a certain point of view. So, when these little girls see that the most prized gift that they can get at Christmastime is this little white doll, that's the master narrative speaking. "This is beautiful, this is lovely, and you're not it.

If I deal with my block and you deal with your block, we'll have two good blocks.