Nikki Giovanni Quotes

The thing is, every relationship is different, and when you start talking about your problems, other people tend to talk about theirs.

That is what I did with Jack, and that's why he liked to do the readings with me because he knew I was there for him, and for our ability to blend the poetry and the music.

There's a tremendous power and energy in sharing your life with another person.

Got just enough room to be a friend of yours. Oh I hope you got room to be a friend of mine.

I think that when somebody, when people really have a connection with each other, they change each other. You become a different person, hopefully a better person, because of it.

Women anchor me. They're there when I need them. They're sensitive to me, and I'm sensitive to them. I'm not saying I've loved that many women.

There's the life you live and the life you leave behind. but what you share with someone else - especially someone you love - that's not just how you bury your past. It's how you write you future.

Ah, the poverty, the miserable poverty, of any love that lies outside of marriage, of any love that is not a living together, a sharing of all!

Friendship buys friendship.

I don't know, think for that relationship in particular age doesn't really come into play.

When you become deeply involved with someone, their problems become yours, and vice versa. It's family.

I never had a connection like that to anyone, where every day you think about what you’ll tell them and you wonder what they’re doing, and you know they’re wondering what you’re doing.

Why do I always feel like you're trying to staple my umbilical cord to the corner of your desk?

We are trained to analyze problems and create solutions. We forget that marriage is a relationship, not a project to be completed or a problem to solve.

I'm beginning to think that maybe it's not just how much you love someone. Maybe what matters is who you are when you're with them.

You have to believe in marriage and you have to believe in a relationship between two people. If you really think in your life that you have found the right person, you have to stick to it, even though there are ups and downs. If you really believe in your union, you have to nourish it and work for it, then you can really spend your life together forever.

Very often, if you think about what's erotic and break it down, as we're feeling the excitement of eroticism, we're feeling fear. We want to try to dominate our fear and get rid of our fear, so we go towards it and have sex with it, basically. That's really sad.

For me, as far as friendship goes, I think you truly get out of it, what you put into it.

Men marry what they need. I marry you.

If something doesn't turn out as planned, you will ask yourself, 'How did I create that? What was I thinking? What were my beliefs? What did I say or not say? What did I do or not do to create that result? How did I get the other person to act that way? What do I need to do differently next time to get the result I want?'

The vital air of friendship is composed of confidence. Friendship perishes in proportion as this air diminishes.

I think [Charles] Dickens was an extrovert and Nelly [Ternan] an introvert, and I think that Nelly saw beyond the fame and adulation and she actually loved Dickens essentially for who he was. So I think he felt like she was someone he could be himself with.

The minute you start keeping score, you're destroying the relationship.

I think my family love each other so much and expect so much from each other, and I think we expect a type of honesty in the work that we all do.

I like working with family and friends and people I admire. All my movies are filled with family members of some capacity. I think it means more when you have a personal relationship with someone.