Nikki Giovanni Quotes

My room for books and study or for sitting and thinking about nothing in particular to see what would happen was at the end of a hall.

For me, writing is a concentrated form of thinking.

Saying what we think gives a wider range of conversation than saying what we know.

I don't know whether I have ideas all the time. I think I'm curious about things all the time; I think I'm always curious, and I think I'm always interested in whatever passes by, and I know I tend to think about things, and I tend to talk about things, and sometimes that takes root and gives me something to chase.

I want to write a book that makes people debate, and makes people think, interact with each other and exchange ideas... I write because I'm engaged in this big conversation.

Reading is like thinking, like praying, like talking to a friend, like expressing your ideas, like listening to other people's ideas, like listening to music, like looking at the view, like taking a walk on the beach.

I'm always talking to people. It's not that complicated. I just find somebody and say, "Do you have any ideas." If they do, we just start thinking things around.

Thinking about writing as an act of celebration is sometimes a helpful framework for me. It allows me to prioritize what I want to call attention to and what I want others to know about me. It makes me ask: What is worth celebrating?

I've always liked the idea of improvised music. Improvised anything. It's what conversation is.

I wanted to be a poet. I had a really romantic idea about what that would mean. My parents knew some poets, and I liked how they dressed and acted, but I didn't really acknowledge that I only liked reading some bits of poetry while I was peeing or something.

Writing is not life, but I think that sometimes it can be a way back to life.

I write to make peace with the things I cannot control. I write to create fabric in the world that often appears black and white. I write to meet my ghosts. I write to begin a dialogue. I write to imagine things differently and in imagining things differently perhaps the world will change.

I used to worry I was entirely uninteresting, but the truth is I think if my life was more exciting I'd never have any time to write.

You can't hurry creativity, so take time to ponder your ideas. Sit back and take time to think things over. That's usually how the best ideas bloom.

Writing is one way to go about thinking, and the practice and habit of writing not only drain the mind but supply it, too.

A book is a device to ignite the imagination.

You have to give your art everything you can - I don't mean only writing, but studying other poets and poetics, thinking, reading what poets have written other than their poetry.

Writing is really a way of thinking--not just feeling but thinking about things that are disparate, unresolved, mysterious, problematic or just sweet.

By elevating your reading, you will improve your writing or at least tickle your thinking.

For Borges, the core of reality lay in books; reading books, writing books, talking about books. In a visceral way, he was conscious of continuing a dialogue begun thousands of years before and which he believed would never end.

Books light the fire-whether it's a book that's already written, or an empty journal that needs to be filled in.

Sometimes it takes a germ of an idea, which takes a long time to digest.

It varies, I don't think there is any one set way of writing songs or coming up with ideas, it comes in so many ways you know.

I don't really like to just sit down at a computer and write because that tends to be a little forced. Sometimes the funniest ideas just happen in the moment, when you're talking to people, or you notice something.

Conversation is the legs on which thought walks; and writing, the wings by which it flies.