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“There are times in life when, instead of complaining, you do something about your complaints.”
-- Rita Dove
#Black History #Complaining #Complaints
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“Nothing is too small. Nothing is too, quote-unquote, ordinary or insignificant. Those are the things that make up the measure of our days, and they're the things that sustain us. And they're the things that certainly can become worthy of poetry.”
-- Rita Dove
#Ordinary #Worthy #Insignificant
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“You have to imagine it possible before you can see something. You can have the evidence right in front of you, but if you can't imagine something that has never existed before, it's impossible.”
-- Rita Dove
#Women #Imagination #Impossible
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“If they don't read, if they don't love reading; if they don't find themselves compulsively reading, I don't think they're really a writer”
-- Rita Dove
#Reading #Thinking #Love Of Reading
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“Rap is only one end of a whole spectrum of verbal play and virtuosity. Rap is geared for aural pleasure.”
-- Rita Dove
#Rap #Play #Pleasure
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“Without imagination we can go nowhere. And imagination is not restricted to the arts. Every scientist I have met who has been a success has had to imagine.”
-- Rita Dove
#Art #Imagination #Imagine
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“Everybody who's anybody longs to be a tree.”
-- Rita Dove
#Tree
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“Libraries are where it all begins.”
-- Rita Dove
#Library #Librarian
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“If we really want to be full and generous in spirit, we have no choice but to trust at some level.”
-- Rita Dove
#Trust #Choices #Levels
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“Being true to yourself really means being true to all the complexities of the human spirit.”
-- Rita Dove
#Mean #Spirit #Be True To Yourself
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“When I was young, I was older than I am today.”
-- Rita Dove
#Today #Young
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“All of us have moments in our childhood where we come alive for the first time. And we go back to those moments and think, This is when I became myself.”
-- Rita Dove
#Thinking #Childhood #Alive
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“Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.”
-- Rita Dove
#Powerful #Poetry #Language
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“The poetry that sustains me is when I feel that, for a minute, the clouds have parted and I've seen ecstasy or something”
-- Rita Dove
#Clouds #Minutes #Ecstasy
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“My childhood library was small enough not to be intimidating. And yet I felt the whole world was contained in those two rooms. I could walk any aisle and smell wisdom.”
-- Rita Dove
#Two #Smell #Childhood
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“Creative writing and literacy go hand and hand.”
-- Rita Dove
#Writing #Hands #Creative
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“To me, a poem is almost like someone whispering to another person, or you hear the whispering in your head. I hope with my own poems that the reader feels a connection, soul to soul, that'll help us all feel a little less alone on the planet. And it does have the power to direct change. A writer can make the word 'dark' be something positive. You can relieve a word like 'hysterical' of its misogynistic implications. You can make the language your own. That's what poetry is about.”
-- Rita Dove
#Dark #Soul #Connections
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“I grew up in Ohio, where civil-rights accomplishments had already begun to accelerate before Martin Luther King appeared. In hindsight, we know that many people, black and white, were instrumental in changing the Jim Crow status quo on all levels.”
-- Rita Dove
#Kings #Black And White #Rights
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“Instead of trying to come up and pontificate on what literature is, you need to talk with children, to teachers, and make sure they get poetry in the curriculum early.”
-- Rita Dove
#Teacher #Children #Trying
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“If only the sun-drenched celebrities are being noticed and worshiped, then our children are going to have a tough time seeing the value in the shadows, where the thinkers, probers and scientists are keeping society together.”
-- Rita Dove
#Children #Tough Times #Together
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“I change jobs like drinking water ... And as I grow accustomed to the new flavor of a drink I regard as delicious, yes, vital, something fades, life balks. So I break camp; I shed skins.”
-- Rita Dove
#Jobs #Drinking #Water
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“What's a word, a talisman, to hold against the world?”
-- Rita Dove
#World #Talismans
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“Can it be that even as one grows to fit the space one lives in, one cannot grow until there's space to grow?”
-- Rita Dove
#Space #Fit #Grows
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“In working on a poem, I love to revise. Lots of younger poets don't enjoy this, but in the process of revision I discover things”
-- Rita Dove
#Revision #Poet #Process
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“There are distinct duties of a poet laureate. I plan a reading series at the Library of Congress and advise the librarian. The rest is how I want to promote poetry”
-- Rita Dove
#Reading #Library #Want
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“Courage has nothing to do with our determination to be great. It has to do with what we decide in that moment when we are called upon to be more.”
-- Rita Dove
#Determination #Moments #That Moment
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“Listen how they say your name. If they can't say that right, there's no way they're going to know how to treat you proper, neither.”
-- Rita Dove
#Names #Way #Treats
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“I've always been intrigued by the way history works, the way we decide what is mentioned.”
-- Rita Dove
#Way #Intrigued
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“I think children have talent and insight, but it gets beaten out of them.”
-- Rita Dove
#Children #Thinking #Talent
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“I see a resurgence of interest in poetry. I am less optimistic about the prospects for the arts when it comes to federal funding.”
-- Rita Dove
#Art #Optimistic #Perspective
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