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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

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I Grow Old Though

Nikki Giovanni

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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

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Poetry Is The Most Mistaught Subject In Any School Because We Teach Poetry By Form And Not By Content.

The Poet Melvin B. Tolson Once Said "a Civilization Is Judged Only In Its Decline." That Made Sense To Me. I Would Imagine The Same Is True For Poets And Tennis Players.

School Buildings Should Be Opened And Used Twenty Four Hours A Day.

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?

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.

We Eat Up Artists Like There's Going To Be A Famine At The End.

Life Is A Process Where People Mix And Match, Fall Apart And Come Back Together.

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.

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.

The Nature Of Tragedy And Accident Is That We Cannot Predict.

Facts Are Only Tools To Gain Control Over Yourself And Other People.

Poetry Is Like Air. It's One Of The Necessary Things. Everyone Benefits From Poetry. And As You Know, Poetry Is International. There Are Only Two Things That Are Truly International, Poetry And Wine.

I'm Glad I Understand That While Language Is A Gift, Listening Is A Responsibility. (u.s. Poet And Writer, 1943- )

She Knows Who She Is, Because She Knows Who She Isn't.

We Just Didn't Put Any Pressure On Each Other, And I Think That Everybody Needs Somebody, And I Didn't Do It To Try To Do It; It's What We [with Nina Simone] Were To Each Other.

No One Needs To Teach You To Be Mean; We Need To Be Taught To Be Kind.

Rage Is To Writers What Water Is To Fish.

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-

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.

Photographers Direct The Eye Toward A Particular Object. We Who Write, One Hopes, Are Directing The Heart And The Soul.

I Am Ever Fascinated By The Human Experience And By, Actually, Human Beings.

Human Experience

A Lot Of People Refuse To Do Things Because They Don't Want To Go Naked... . We As Black People, We As People, We As The Human Species Have Got To Get Used To The Fact We're Not Going To Be Right Most Of The Time, Not Even When Our Intentions Are Good. We've Got To Go Naked And See What Happens.

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.

Black Love Is Black Wealth And They'll Probably Talk About My Hard Childhood And Never Understand That All The While I Was Quite Happy

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Visibility - You've Got To Find A Way To Make People Know You're There

We Are All Either Wheels Or Connectors. Whichever We Are We Must Find Truth And Balance, Which Is A Bicycle. Trust And Balance Are Also Essential To True Love.

God Knows It's A Sign Of A Really Sick Mind To See Grown People, Adults With Responsibilities, Wearing Class Rings.

I Move On Feeling And Have Learned To Distrust Those Who Don't.

I Am A Huge Fan Of The Black Woman. I Never Hesitate To Recommend Her When Times Are Bad Or Things Go Wrong.

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.

Poems Don't Have To Rhyme... Poems Are About Beauty And Emotion; In Other Words Poems Are About Feelings.

Schools Should Be Integrated By Race And By Class.

We Are Less Lonely When We Connect. Art Is Connection.

Poets Can Tell The Truth As They See It. It’s The Author’s Story, The Author’s Voice.

Telling The Truth

Black Poetry Is Not For Black People...it Is For Everybody

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.

Don't Want To Be Near You For The Thoughts We Share But The Words We Never Have To Speak.

African American

Words Of Wisdom

My Dream Is A Red Dress Above My Knees High-heel Red Sandals And Me Coming Over The Top The Music Booming Hi Howie I Will Say With A Lovely Smile I Don't Want To Play The Game I Want To Be It.

You Must Be Unintimidated By Your Own Thoughts.

Now, Everything I Do, I Do Because I Want To. And I Believe The Best Is Yet To Come.

Best Is Yet To Come

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We Love Because It's The Only True Adventure.

Floating To Shore...riding A Low Moon...on A Slow Cloud.

Language Instruction Should Start In The First Grade. Writing, Also.

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.

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Deal With Yourself As A Individual, Worthy Of Respect And Make Everyone Else Deal With You The Same Way.

The World Is Not A Pleasant Place To Be Without Someone To Hold And Be Held By.

Most Of My Books Are A Two-year Project. I Tend To Follow My Heart And My Mind And Research Materials Where They Take Me.

Mistakes Are A Fact Of Life. It Is The Response To The Error That Counts.

For Most Of My Life, I've Thought Of Myself As Pretty Cool.

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White People Really Deal More With God And Black People With Jesus.

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I Am Proud Of The Hip Hop Generation. They Are Good Business People And, Actually, Good People. It's Strange That The Only Time The Major Press Talks About Them Is When Someone Gets Killed Or Does Drugs Or Something; Yet These Are The Same Press People Who Made Heroes Out Of The Mafia And Other Crooks, You Know.

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War Is Not A Jobs Program.

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Everything Will Change. The Only Question Is Growing Up Or Decaying.

Some Say We Are Responsible For Those We Love. Others Know We Are Responsible For Those Who Love Us.

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There Are Things You Stand Up For Because It’s Right.

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Life Is A Marvelous, Transitory Adventure.

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Once You Know Who You Are, You Don't Have To Worry Anymore.

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One Stands, In Fact, In Awe Of The Constitution Of The United States, Though It Is An Idea And Not Quite A Reality.

The Trip To Mars Can Only Be Understood Through Black Americans. I Say, The Trip To Mars Can Only Be Understood Through Black Americans.

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.

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If You're A Writer, The Answer To Everything Is Yes.

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The Future Is In Good Hands.

I Am So Hip Even My Errors Are Correct

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If You Don't Understand Yourself You Don't Understand Anybody Else.

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[to Become A Poet] The Most Important Thing Is To Pay Attention. The Next Would Probably Be To Read; It's So Important To Pay Attention. It Keeps You From Being Bored, And I Might Add It Keeps You From Being Boorish.

In Law School They Teach You That Everything Is A Contract; Well, In Poetry Everything Is A Narrative.

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I Am Proud Of The Hip Hop Generation. They Are Good Business People And, Actually, Good People.

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Family And Friends

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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.

Favorite Poems Are Like Favorite Children. We Definitely Have Them But We Never Tell As The Others Would Have Their Feelings Hurt.

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.

I Think We're Always In Love. It's That Simple. And It's Important To Remember That Love Doesn't Have Anything To Do With Sex. It's Two Different Things. Being In Love Is The Happy Part. I Was Teasing My Gentleman, "we Know That You're In Love When You Cook For Us." It's True. When Men Cook For You, They're In Love.

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.

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.

But Nonviolence Was Never For The Oppressor; It Was For The Oppressed.

Black Love Is Black Wealth

Art Offers Sanctuary To Everyone Willing To Open Their Hearts As Well As Their Eyes.

I Prefer Her [nina Simone's] Jazz Period Much More So Than Her Folk Period.

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.

If Culture Was A Railroad, I Can See The Tracks Running From The Spirituals To The Hip Hop Nation.

I Hope I Die Warmed By The Life That I Tried To Live

[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.

It Is Not Who You Attend School With But Who Controls The School You Attend.

Poetry Is The Most Informative Of All Of The Arts Because Everything Comes Down To Poetry. No Matter What It Is We Are Describing, Ultimately We Use Either A Metaphor; Or We Say "that's Poetry In Motion." You Drink A Glass Of Wine And Say, "that's Poetry In A Bottle." Everything Is Poetry, So I Think We Come Down To Emotional Information. And That's What Poetry Conveys.

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.

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

Show Me Someone Not Full Of Herself And I'll Show You A Hungry Person.

I Spend A Lot Of Time Learning About Bird Watching.

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.

It's Really Just Interesting To Ask: Why Not? And See Where That Takes Me.

Just As Nature Abhors A Vacuum, Humans Resist Change. Change Will Occur; Vacuums Will Be Filled.

A Lot Is Yet To Be Enjoyed. I'd Like To Stomp Grapes For Wine. Go To Antarctica. Have Dinner With Venus Williams Who Is The Greatest Tennis Player Ever.

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.

Nothing Improves Your Writing, I Think, As Much As Your Keeping Writing.

Being Black And Poor Is, I Think, Radically Different From Being Anything Else And Poor. Poor, To Most Blacks, Is A State Of Mind. Those Who Accept It Are Poor; Those Who Struggle Are Middle Class.

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.

We All Have Our Muses. My Grandmother And My Mother Are The People I Write For. I'll Never Have To Worry About Who Buys My Work, Or Who Likes It, And Who Doesn't. The People Who I Want To Be Proud Of Me Already Are.

Death Is A Slave's Freedom.

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.

In The Name Of Peace They Waged The Wars Ain't They Got No Shame

All Systems Require Myths For Their Longevity.

You Must Be Unintimidated By Your Own Thoughts Because If You Write With Someone Looking Over You Shoulder, You'll Never Write.

If Everybody Became A Poet The World Would Be Much Better. We Would All Read To Each Other.

And You Will Understand All Too Soon That You, My Children Of Battle, Are Your Heroes

There're Two People In The World That Are Not Likeable: A Master And A Slave.

I Don't Have A Life-style, I Have A Life.

Iife/personality Must Be Taken As A Total Entity. All Of Your Life Is All Of Your Life, And No One Incident Stands Alone.

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.

I Try To Impress Upon My Students The Importance Of Looking, Listening... Paying Attention, In Other Words. You Must Pay Attention.

If I Could Come Back As Anything - I'd Be A Bird, First, But Definitely The Command Key Is My Second Choice.

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.

I Used To Dream Militant Dreams Of Taking Over America To Show These Whitefolks How It Should Be Done I Used To Dream Radical Dreams Of Blowing Everyone Away With My Perceptive Powers Of Correct Analysis I Even Used To Think That I'd Be The One To Stop The Riot And Negotiate The Peace Then I Awoke & Dug That If I Dreamed Natural Dreams Of Being A Natural Woman Doing What A Woman Does When She's Natural I Would Have A Revolution.

Mistakes Are A Fact Of Life. If You Are Willing To Be Wrong Then You Have Earned The Right To Be Right.

Educational Progress Is A National Concern; Education Is A Private One.

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."

Before You Jump Off A Bridge Or Hang Yourself Or Be Unhappy Please Consider: Live For Yourself; Those Who Hate You Have No Purchase

The Poet Can Only Write The Poems; It Takes The Reader To Complete The Meaning.

We Obviously Need The Truth. We're Living In A Country Of Lies.

There Is No Such Thing As Writer's Block. There Is Only Not Enough Information. If You Can't Write, Learn Something.

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.

We Are Better Than We Think And Not Yet What We Want To Be.

Ever Been Kidnapped By A Poet If I Were A Poet I'd Kidnap You Put You In My Phrases And Meter.

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.'

We Need To Make Sure Our Children Travel To See Things. Not Necessarily Long Distances But At Least Out Of The Neighborhood. On A Train. A Boat. An Airplane.

My Main Strength As A Young Writer Was That I Had No Fear Of Making Mistakes. I Knew I Would And I Knew I Could And Would Learn From Them.

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.

We [black People] Have Always Used Our Creativity To Battle And We're Not The Only Ones. Black Americans Are Certainly Leaders In That Simply Because We Were Denied Education And Dealt With Enforced Illiteracy. But People Seem To Always Forget That Literacy Is Not The Only Way Of Learning Things Or Conveying Knowledge.

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.

I Love You Because No Two Snowflakes Are Alike, And It Is Possible, If You Stand Tippy-toe, To Walk Between The Raindrops.

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.

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.

I'm An Old Storyteller. I Tell The Story. It's About The Story.

My Work Is A Part Of Me And I Know It. I Have No Reason To Try To Pick One Part Of Me Out From The Rest. I Only See My Work, Or Rather I Should Say I See My Work Only Telling My Part Of The Human Experience.

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.

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.

And Like An Unfaithful Mate, Once A Car Has Let You Down You Never Sort Of Trust It Again.

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.

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

Poetry And Music Are Very Good Friends. Like Mommies And Daddies And Strawberries And Cream - They Go Together.

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.

I Used To Go Up To Her House. She Lived Upstate [in New York] And I Lived In Manhattan; You're Living In A Lot Of Noise And My Career Was Being Built. For Me To Spend Time With Nina [simone] Is To Spend A Lot Of Quiet Time.

I Would Put Books On Par With Chocolate, Because A Good Book Is Delicious.

Who I Really Am Keeps Surprising Me.

If I Can't Have What I Want . . . Then My Job Is To Want What I've Got And Be Satisfied That At Least There Is Something More To Want

If Now Isn't A Good Time For The Truth I Don't See When We'll Get To It.

Libraries...house Our Dreams.

Everybody That Loves Freedom Loves Harriet Tubman Because She Was Determined Not Only To Be Free, But To Make Free As Many People As She Could.

I Think Speeches And Fruit Should Always Be Fresh.

The Unwillingness To Try Is Worse Than Any Failure.

The Ability To Take Pride In Your Own Work Is One Of The Hallmarks Of Sanity.

Self Confidence

Hip-hop Is A Cultural Expression - It's Embracing.

Schools Should Serve Breakfast, Lunch And An Afternoon Snack. No Sugared Drinks, No Fast Type Food.

We Must Invest In Tomorrow. And Pay Our Teachers For Teaching As We Pay Our Coaches For Coaching.

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