Rita Dove quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Rita Dove

Rita Dove Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Rita Dove on Wise Famous Quotes.

Since she's discovered
men would rather drown
than nibble,
she does just
fine.

It really wasn't until I was in college when I began to write more and more, and I realized I was scheduling my entire life around my writing.

I always loved science. And in fact, I got a science award in high school. I mean, I loved science, but I think I loved literature more.

My favorite poets may not be your bread and butter. I have more favorite poems than favorite poets.

I write short stories, and I wrote a play.

By making us stop for a moment, poetry gives us an opportunity to think about ourselves as human beings on this planet and what we mean to each other.

Our situation is intolerable, but what's worse
is to sit here and do nothing.

What's a word, a talisman, to hold against the world?

We should always do something that makes us feel like a child again. Keep learning, no matter what it is.

When we are touched by something it's as if we're being brushed by an angel's wings.

I thought, after the Pulitzer, at least nothing will surprise me quite that much in my life. And another one happened. It was quite amazing.

I have a high guilt quotient. A poem can go through as many as 50 or 60 drafts. It can take from a day to two years-or longer.

I think children have talent and insight, but it gets beaten out of them.

I was apprehensive. I feared every time I talked about poetry, it would be filtered through the lens of race, sex, and age.

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.

I didn't know writers could be real live people, because I never knew any writers.

I loved to read, but I always thought that the dream was too far away. The person who had written the book was a god, it wasn't a person.

I was pirouette and flourish,
I was filigree and flame.
How could I count my blessings
when I didn't know their names?

I see a resurgence of interest in poetry. I am less optimistic about the prospects for the arts when it comes to federal funding.

Can it be that even as one grows to fit the space one lives in, one cannot grow until there's space to grow?

To practice your scales, so to speak, in order play the symphony, is what you have to do as a young poet.

Crassly put: When I write, I am trying not to bore myself and my readers.

I'm a night person. My best times are midnight to six, actually.

The joy of working at something to find out what it means to me is what I grew up with.

When I was young, I was older than I am today.

I keep the drafts of each poem in color-coded folders. I pick up the folders according to how I feel about that color that day.

I make a discovery in a poem as I write it.

Being true to yourself really means being true to all the complexities of the human spirit.

I think if you put something in a file that says "war poems" or "love poems" that you already restrict the way in which the poem might move.

Sometimes
a word is found so right it trembles
at the slightest explanation.

A good poem is like a bouillon cube. It's concentrated and it nourishes you when you need it.

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.

If we really want to be full and generous in spirit, we have no choice but to trust at some level.

If you cannot be free, be a mystery.

Poetry connects you to yourself, to the self that doesn't know how to talk or negotiate.

I prefer to explore the most intimate moments, the smaller, crystallized details we all hinge our lives on.

I loved to write when I was a child. I wrote, but I always thought it was something that you did as a child, then you put away childish things.

Against Self-Pity
It gets you nowhere but deeper into
your own shit
pure misery a luxury
one never learns to enjoy.

If you can't be free, be a mystery.

The poetry that sustains me is when I feel that, for a minute, the clouds have parted and I've seen ecstasy or something.

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.

Rap is only one end of a whole spectrum of verbal play and virtuosity. Rap is geared for aural pleasure.

For many years, I thought a poem was a whisper overheard, not an aria heard.

I think that when a poem can move readers across generations and across its specific class or race then it becomes truly classic.

Libraries are where it all begins.

Everybody who's anybody longs to be a tree.

It's the combination of the intimate and the public that I find so exciting about being poet laureate.

Equality and self-determination should never be divided in the name of religious or ideological fervor.

I've always been intrigued by the way history works, the way we decide what is mentioned.

The library is an arena of possibility, opening both a window into the soul and a door onto the world.

I think that you certainly don't have to be aged and travel the world to write a poem.

What writing does is to reveal.

Women invented misery,
but we don't understand it.

I try to show what it is about language and music that enthralls, because I think those are the two elements of poetry.

I believe people may have a predisposition for artistic creativity. It doesn't mean they're going to make it.

Don't be so fast, you're all you've got.

I tell you, if you feel strange,
strange things will happen to you:
Fallen peacocks on library shelves

Creative writing and literacy go hand and hand.

It's unfortunate that sometimes in schools, there's this need to have things quantified and graded.

I carry a notebook with me everywhere. But that's only the first step.

There are times in life when, instead of complaining, you do something about your complaints.

If fucking were graceful,desire an alibi.

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.

Being Poet Laureate made me realize I was capable of a larger voice. There is a more public utterance I can make as a poet.

Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.

I think reading Shakespeare's plays when I was young was extremely important. He had the ability to make utter strangers come alive.