Rita Dove Quotes

don't think you can ever forget her don't even try she's not going to budgeno choice but to grant he...

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

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

Three miles from my adopted city lies a village where I came to peace.The world there was a calm pla...

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

Without imagination we can go nowhere. And imagination is not restricted to the arts. Every scientis...

Have you ever heard a good joke? If you've ever heard someone just right, with the right pacing, the...

My father is a chemist, my mother was a homemaker. My parents instilled in us the feeling that learn...

From the time I began to read, as a child, I loved to feel their heft in my hand and the warm spot c...

Instead of trying to come up and pontificate on what literature is, you need to talk with children, ...

NexusI wrote stubbornly into the evening.At the window, a giant praying mantisrubbed his monkey wren...

If our children are unable to voice what they mean, no one will know how they feel. If they can’t im...

I was apprehensive. I feared every time I talked about poetry, it would be filtered through the lens...

You have to imagine it possible before you can see something. You can have the evidence right in fro...

I think one of the things that people tend to forget is that poets do write out of life. It isn't so...

I see a resurgence of interest in poetry. I am less optimistic about the prospects for the arts when...

Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.

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

The First BookOpen it.Go ahead, it won't bite.Well. . . maybe a little.More a nip, like. A tingle.It...

Nothing is too small. Nothing is too, quote-unquote, ordinary or insignificant. Those are the things...

Since she's discoveredmen would rather drownthan nibble,she does just fine.

I was pirouette and flourish,I was filigree and flame.How could I count my blessingswhen I didn't kn...

There are distinct duties of a poet laureate. I plan a reading series at the Library of Congress and...

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

I've never stopped wanting to cross the equator, or touch an

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

Against Self-PityIt gets you nowhere but deeper intoyour own shit--pure misery a luxuryone never lea...

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 ...