Nikki Giovanni Love Quotes

I love you because no two snowflakes are alike, and it is possible, if you stand tippy-toe, to walk between the raindrops.

the world is not a pleasant place to be without someone to hold and be held by.

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 life those who offer you depression, despair and disrespect.

We love because it's the only true adventure.

and sometimes I sit down at my typewriter and I think not of someone cause there isn't anyone to think about and i wonder is it worth it

Black love is black wealth

I always loved English because whatever human beings are, we are storytellers. It is our stories that give a light to the future. When I went to college I became a history major because history is such a wonderful story of who we think we are. English is much more a story of who we really are.

....but it cannot be a mistake to have cared...it cannot be an error to have tried....it cannot be incorrect to have loved.

Ego Tripping I was born in the congo I walked to the fertile crescent and built the sphinx I designed a pyramid so tough that a star that only glows every one hundred years falls into the center giving divine perfect light I am bad I sat on the throne drinking nectar with allah I got hot and sent an ice age to europe to cool my thirst My oldest daughter is nefertiti the tears from my birth pains created the nile I am a beautiful woman I gazed on the forest and burned out the sahara desert with a packet of goat's meat and a change of clothes I crossed it in two hours I am a gazelle so swift so swift you can't catch me For a birthday present when he was three I gave my son hannibal an elephant He gave me rome for mother's day My strength flows ever on My son noah built new/ark and I stood proudly at the helm as we sailed on a soft summer day I turned myself into myself and was jesus men intone my loving name All praises All praises I am the one who would save I sowed diamonds in my back yard My bowels deliver uranium the filings from my fingernails are semi-precious jewels On a trip north I caught a cold and blew My nose giving oil to the arab world I am so hip even my errors are correct I sailed west to reach east and had to round off the earth as I went The hair from my head thinned and gold was laid across three continents I am so perfect so divine so ethereal so surreal I cannot be comprehended except by my permission I mean...I...can fly like a bird in the sky...

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

we used to talk all night and do things alone together and i’ve begun (as a reaction to a feeling) to balance the pleasure of loneliness against the pain of loving you

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

If were a shower I could saturate your hair Work my way over your lips Across your shoulders Around your waist Through your knees To the tips of your toes And back again Warm wet salty Sweet

The night loves the stars as they play about the Darkness...the day loves the light caressing the sun...We love...those who do...because we live in a world requiring light and Darkness...partnership and solitude...sameness and difference...the familiar and the unknown...We love because it's the only true adventure... from Love: Is a Human Condition

Grant me Love implies not desire but Commitment Commitment accepts Challenge Challenge embraces Theory And you and I will get Reason: A way to explore past actions and future dreams

i wanted to take your hand and run with you together toward ourselves down the street to your street i wanted to laugh aloud and skip the notes past the marquee advertising “women in love” past the record shop with “The Spirit In The Dark” past the smoke shop past the park and no parking today signs past the people watching me in my blue velvet and i don’t remember what you wore but only that i didn’t want anything to be wearing you i wanted to give myself to the cyclone that is your arms and let you in the eye of my hurricane and know the calm before and some fall evening after the cocktails and the very expensive and very bad steak served with day-old baked potatoes after the second cup of coffee taken while listening to the rejected violin player maybe some fall evening when the taxis have passed you by and that light sort of rain that occasionally falls in new york begins you’ll take a thought and laugh aloud the notes carrying all the way over to me and we’ll run again together toward each other yes?

english isn't a good language to express emotion through mostly i imagine because people try to speak english instead of trying to speak through it

and as soon as i die i hope everyone who loved me learns the meaning of my death which is a simple lesson don't do what you do very well very well and enjoy it it scares white folk and makes black ones truly mad

you see, my whole life is tied up to unhappiness it's father cooking breakfast and me getting fat as a hog or having no food at all and father proving his incompetence again i wish i knew how it would feel to be free it's having a job they won't let you work or no work at all castrating me (yes it happens to women too) it's a sex object if you're pretty and no love or love and no sex if you're fat get back fat black woman be a mother grandmother strong thing but not woman gameswoman romantic woman love needer man seeker dick eater sweat getter fuck needing love seeking woman it's a hole in your shoe and buying lil sis a dress and her saying you shouldn't when you know all too well that you shouldn't but smiles are only something we give to properly dressed social workers not each other only smiles of i know your game sister which isn't really a smile joy is finding a pregnant roach and squashing it not finding someone to hold let go get off get back don't turn me on you black dog how dare you care about me you ain't go no good sense cause i ain't shit you must be lower than that to care it's a filthy house with yesterday's watermelon and monday's tears cause true ladies don't know how to clean it's intellectual devastation of everybody to avoid emotional commitment "yeah honey i would've married him but he didn't have no degree" it's knock-kneed mini skirted wig wearing died blond mamma's scar born dead my scorn your whore rough heeeled broken nailed powdered face me whose whole life is tied up to unhappiness cause it's the only for real thing i know

some say we are responsible for those we love others know we are responsible for those who love us

I think you always write what you love. Whether it’s your grandmother or gourmet cooking or mountains and rivers. Sunsets kissing the tallest building or chipmunks scattering off to bed. I like the quiet. And I like the sound of the quiet. I’m a mountain girl. I listen and make lists of what I hear.

A lot of my anger stems from love.

Nikki Giovanni, ‘We love because it’s the only true adventure.

and i've begun (as a reaction to a feeling) to balance the pleasure of loneliness against the pain of loving you from Balances

The problem with love is not what we feel but what we wish we felt when we began to feel we should feel something.

I love you because I am afraid of the dark and can't sleep in the light....because you, with all your magic powers, were determined that I should love you. Because there was nothing for you but that I would love you. I love you because you made me want to love you more than I love my privacy, my freedom, my commitments, and my responsibilities. I love you because I changed my life to love you.

those folks on the ship who created that moan that became the Spirituals that turned into Jazz and Blues and everything all the way up to Rap and whatever will come next. We who do words are doing what we do. We are not trying to get folk who are frightened of us to be calm around us. We are reminding folk who love us that this is a good thing. Black Ink should be a soup or a drink or something we can embrace with pride. Black Lives Matter. Black Ink reminds us of why.

All we can do, I believe, is take the love and give the love and try to remember who dreamed dreams of us. And try to be faithful to that.

There are things. . . that should not be touched: Books when your hands are sticky with chocolate Cars when your clothes are covered with oil Men when your heart does not love them

Giovanni, in love with her unabashed feminine strength and her reconciliation of love and revolution. I spent nearly every waking moment around Nikki, and I loved her dearly. But sibling relationships are often fraught with petty tortures. I hadn’t wanted to hurt her. But I had. At the time, I couldn’t understand my mother’s anger. I mean this wasn’t really a woman I was punching. This was Nikki. She could take it. Years would pass before I understood how that blow connected to my mom’s past. My mother came to the United States at the age of three. She was born in Lowe River in the tiny parish of Trelawny, Jamaica, hours away from the tourist traps that line the coast. Its swaths of deep brush and arable land made it great for farming but less appealing for honeymoons and hedonism. Lowe River was quiet, and remote, and it was home for my mother, her older brother Ralph, and my grandparents. My maternal great-grandfather Mas Fred, as he was known, would plant a coconut tree at his home in Mount Horeb, a neighboring area, for each of his kids and grandkids when they were born. My mom always bragged that hers was the tallest and strongest of the bunch. The land that Mas Fred and his wife, Miss Ros, tended had been cared for by our ancestors for generations. And it was home for my mom until her parents earned enough money to bring the family to the States to fulfill my grandfather’s dream of a theology degree from an American university. When my mom first landed in the Bronx, she was just a small child, but she was a survivor and learned quickly. She studied the other kids at school like an anthropologist, trying desperately to fit in. She started with the way she spoke. She diligently listened to the radio from the time she was old enough to turn it on and mimicked what she heard. She’d always pull back enough in her interactions with her classmates to give herself room to quietly observe them, so that when she got home she could practice imitating their accents, their idiosyncrasies, their style. Words like irie became cool. Constable became policeman. Easy-nuh became chill out. The melodic, swooping movement of her Jamaican patois was quickly replaced by the more stable cadences of American English. She jumped into the melting pot with both feet. Joy Thomas entered American University in Washington, D.C., in 1968, a year when she and her adopted homeland were both experiencing

Just as people want to make Malcolm X an integrationist, thereby changing the nature of his daring and his truth, people want us to overlook the sensitivity and love Tupac Shakur shows because, after all, if he loves, if he cries, if he, in other words, is not a monster, than what have we done? What a great crime has been committed in the name of, what, the status quo? How awful and ugly of us. [from Nikki Giovanni's introduction in the Rose that Grew from Concrete by Tupac Shakur]

if it's a trail we can hike it if it has two wheels we can bike it if it's an allergy we can sneeze it if it's a pimple we can squeeze it if it's dew it 'covers Dixie' if it's Tinker Bell it's a pixie if it's a breeze it can blow us if it's the sun it can know us if it's a song we can sing it if it flies we can wing it if it's soda pop then it's drinkable it might be X-Rated but that's unthinkable if it's a boat we can sail it if it's a letter we can mail it if it's a star we can let it shine if it's the moon it can make you mine if it's grass we can rake it if it's free why not take it if it's a tide it can ebb if it's a spider it can web if it's chocolate we can dip it if it's golf ball we can chip it if it's gum we can chew it I hope it's love so we can do it

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.

once a snowflake fell on my brow and i loved it so much and i kissed it and it was happy and called its cousins and brothers and a web of snow engulfed me then i reached to love them all and i squeezed them and they became a spring rain and i stood perfectly still and was a flower "Winter Poem

Love is in short supply Like leaves on a winter vine Whether it's right or whether it's wrong I'll pay the price for mine

When arrogance calls it should always be poetry that answers thereby granting a stay to humankind's feelings of omnipotence. When love calls it must be poetry that answers bringing the sweet perfume of gentleness as our hearts pound and pound; when courage calls it will always be poetry that answers as we rise above ourselves to bring about a better thing. When war calls, poetry is the only answer. Poetry says No to destruction and Yes to possibility. Poetry is a good idea. A good friend. A good neighbor. Let's write poems.

I don’t have a craft. I have a love of the people who traveled the ocean to become a new people.

And isn’t that what literature should teach us. To be our own hero. To love. To care. To cry. To laugh. To live. And try to let others live, too.

Good Luck when it isn’t luck that you need but better science which can explain how and why when all is said and done we are left with this density that forces us to recognize the Eagle Nebula is falling into itself and will one day be a planet though mostly we will not be around to see it and then there are those troublesome Black holes which are so totally fascinating though no one can exactly put their finger on what makes them so important and I am here to tell you I know: the density of a Black hole does not prevent light from escaping but rather that once light encounters the Black whole it finds such beauty and peace and comfort it no longer needs to search which is another word for love…and I do