Rita Dove Quotes

Going to the library was the one place we got to go without asking for permission. And they let us choose what we wanted to read. It was a feeling of having a book be mine entirely.

What is ironic is that Allen Ginsberg's importance was in its twilight for so many years that it took his death to bring it to the front page. He electrified an entire world!

The American Dream is a phrase we'll have to wrestle with all of our lives. It means a lot of things to different people. I think we're redefining it now

I'm never quite sure how the poem is going to resolve itself and that I'm always in some way surprised. I make a discovery in a poem as I write it.

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

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

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

To write for PC reasons, because you think you ought to be dealing with this subject, is never going to yield anything that is really going to matter to anyone else. It has to matter to you.

I was appointed Poet Laureate. It came totally out of the blue because most Poet Laureates had been considerably older than I. It was not something that I even had begun to dream about!

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

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 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.

I write short stories, and I wrote a play.

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

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

What writing does is to reveal.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

don't think you can ever forget her don't even try she's not going to budgeno choice but to grant her spacecrown her with skyfor she is one of the manyand she is each of us

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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