Rita Dove Quotes

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

If fucking were graceful,desire an alibi. ~ Rita Dove

If you can't be free, be a mystery. ~ Rita Dove

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

The sound of the mandolin is a very curious sound because it's cheerful and melancholy at the same time, and I think it comes from that shadow string, the double strings. ~ Rita Dove

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. ~ Rita Dove

Nexus
I wrote stubbornly into the evening.
At the window, a giant praying mantis
rubbed his monkey wrench head against the glass,
begging vacantly with pale eyes;
and the commas leapt at me like worms
or miniature scythes blackened with age.
the praying mantis screeched louder,
his ragged jaws opening into formlessness.
I walked outside;
the grass hissed at my heels.
Up ahead in the lapping darkness
he wobbled, magnified and absurdly green,
a brontosaurus, a poet. ~ Rita Dove

I make a discovery in a poem as I write it. ~ Rita Dove

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! ~ Rita Dove

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. ~ Rita Dove

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

Everybody who's anybody longs to be a tree. ~ Rita Dove

If our children are unable to voice what they mean, no one will know how they feel. If they can't imagine a different world, they are stumbling through a darkness made all the more sinister by its lack of reference points. For a young person growing up in America's alienated neighborhoods, there can be no greater empowerment than to dare to speak from the heart - and then to discover that one is not alone in ones feelings. ~ Rita Dove

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

From the time I began to read, as a child, I loved to feel their heft in my hand and the warm spot caused by their intimate weight in my lap; I loved the crisp whisper of a page turning, the musky odor of old paper and the sharp inky whiff of new pages. Leather bindings sent me into ecstasy. I even loved to gaze at a closed book and daydream about the possibilities inside. ~ Rita Dove

I've always felt that the poems I've written which have historical context are hopefully not just simply plucking something out of history and saying great, let's write about that. In every case what has happened is that I've become fascinated or haunted by something and couldn't shake it. ~ Rita Dove

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

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

Anyone can tell you that how you're raised as a child has a great deal to do with how you behave as an adult and whether you have complexes or whether you need to prove yourself or all that kind of stuff and yet the mother in a traditional family who has raised a child never makes it in the history books. ~ Rita Dove

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

Don't think you can ever forget her
don't even try
she's not going to budge
no choice but to grant her space
crown her with sky
for she is one of the many
and she is each of us ~ Rita Dove

The First Book: Go ahead, it won't bite. Well ... maybe a little. More a nip, like. A tingle. It's pleasurable, really. You see, it keeps on opening. You may fall in. Sure, it's hard to get started; remember learning to use knife and fork? Dig in: you'll never reach bottom. It's not like it's the end of the world
just the world as you think you know it. ~ Rita Dove

If you cannot be free, be a mystery. ~ Rita Dove

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

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. ~ Rita Dove

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

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

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. ~ Rita Dove

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

We tend to be so bombarded with information, and we move so quickly, that there's a tendency to treat everything on the surface level and process things quickly. This is antithetical to the kind of openness and perception you have to have to be receptive to poetry.poetry seems to exist in a parallel universe outside daily life in America. ~ Rita Dove

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

I wish someone had told me that my stories are really mine to tell. In other words, anything that I think is important or that has moved me has the ability to move somebody else. ~ Rita Dove

When I was young, I was older than I am today. ~ Rita Dove

My best times are midnight to six actually. I'll leaf through my notebooks and if something catches my eye and I feel like I want to transfer it from the notebook to the page, I do, and then comes this very strange process which is difficult to describe in that I'll write until I get stuck or I can't go any further or I'm boring myself or whatever and then I might go to another poem. ~ Rita Dove

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

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

For years, I had heard about the lack of interest in literature in the U.S. and I had complained about it. I failed to understand how people could fail to be moved by art. ~ Rita Dove

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! ~ Rita Dove

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

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

If we're going to solve the problems of the world, we have to learn how to talk to one another. Poetry is the language at its essence. It's the bones and the skeleton of the language. It teaches you, if nothing else, how to choose your words. ~ Rita Dove

At the very beginning when I begin writing a poem I try not to think of the audience or anyone at all except for trying to get at the very center of what is driving that poem. In a way it's like analyzing myself. ~ Rita Dove

As an African-American, as a woman, I think that I've been sensitized to the way in which history privileges the white male and the way in which certain aspects of history, the things that we are taught in school, the things that are handed down, never, never entered the picture though they might have been very important. ~ Rita Dove

Creative writing and literacy go hand and hand. ~ Rita Dove

What writing does is to reveal. ~ Rita Dove

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

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

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

One narcissus among the ordinary beautiful
flowers, one unlike all the others! She pulled,
stooped to pull harder-
when, sprung out of the earth
on his glittering terrible
carriage, he claimed his due.
It is finished. No one had heard her.
No one! She had strayed from the herd.
(Remember: go straight to school.
This is important, stop fooling around!
Don't answer to strangers. Stick
with your playmates. Keep your eyes down.)
This is how easily the pit
opens. This is how one foot sinks into the ground. ~ Rita Dove

Under adversity, under oppression, the words begin to fail, the easy words begin to fail. In order to convey things accurately, the human being is almost forced to find the most precise words possible, which is a precondition for literature. ~ Rita Dove

If the poem is so moving that even if you have no experience in that particular setting be it 1920's Harlem let's say. You still are so moved that you can put yourself in that position. That means that the writer has managed to go beyond the personal and touch the humanity in all of us and it's really a blast to read it because I realize how that this does hold true for the truly great poems. ~ Rita Dove

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My first advice would be to read, read, read, which sounds interesting coming in a digital age, but it's so much easier to listen to a poem than it is to sit down and actually read it and to hear it in your head and that is something that every poet or aspiring poet needs to be able to do, I think to hear it in their head. ~ Rita Dove

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

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

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. ~ Rita Dove

I am a comic writer, which means I get to slay the dragons, and shoot the bull. ~ Rita Mae Brown

I think you can judge the level of success for any group of people by the reaction against it. ~ Rita Mae Brown

As everyone in Louisiana knows, there was often no communication or coordination between the state and federal government in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. ~ Bobby Jindal

I'm most scared of failing, of disappointing people. ~ Rita Ora

I don't really remember much about Kosovo. I only remember growing up in London, where my parents had to basically start from scratch. ~ Rita Ora

No one remembers her beginnings. Mothers and aunts tell us about infancy and early childhood, hoping we won't forget the past when they had total control over our lives and secretly praying that because of it, we'll include them in our future. ~ Rita Mae Brown

Men love watches with multiple functions. My husband has one that is a combination address book, telescope and piano. ~ Rita Rudner

After a short period spent in Brussels as a guest of a neurological institute, I returned to Turin on the verge of the invasion of Belgium by the German army, Spring 1940, to join my family. The two alternatives left then to us were either to emigrate to the United States, or to pursue some activity that needed neither support nor connection with the outside Aryan world where we lived. My family chose this second alternative. I then decided to build a small research unit at home and installed it in my bedroom. ~ Rita Levi-Montalcini

Possibly, I should have been a jazz singer from the beginning. ~ Rita Coolidge

You know what the ideal dove gun for any given day is? Your other-the one you left at home. ~ Gene Hill

Green's mouth was too full to smile and too full to respond. He was ready to go lower but he wanted to make this good. He rose up and straddled Ruxs' legs, flipping him over. Green slapped that sexy ass hard, the sharp sound loud in the dark room. "Bastard," Ruxs murmured. Green started at the base of Ruxs' neck, his tongue being led by the long spine, as he licked his way down, around the valleys and curves of his back. Never had Green seen a man with a hotter body than Ruxs'. When he got to the top of his ass, Green gripped Ruxs' hip and dove in. Just wetting him, priming him. Ruxs face was pressed into the bedding, muffling his cries. Green wanted to hear how he was making Ruxs feel. Green ~ A.E. Via

Everybody gets married. It's something you have to do, like dying. ~ Rita Mae Brown

Be a combination of a dove and the serpent; not a monster, but a prodigy. ~ Baltasar Gracian

I think gay people are like blondes: There're fewer of them but they have more fun. ~ Rita Mae Brown

I never see a ship sailing out of the channel, or a gull soaring over the sand-bar, without wishing I were on board the ship or had wings, not like a dove 'to fly away and be at rest,' but like a gull, to sweep out into the very heart of the storm. ~ L.M. Montgomery

If you like my novels, I commend your good taste. ~ Rita Mae Brown

If I die tomorrow or in a year, it is the same - it is the message you leave behind you that counts. ~ Rita Levi-Montalcini

I'm a real goof-ball deep down. It's always been my thing to make people like me. ~ Rita Ora

I'm not stopping. My dream has come true, and I'm staying. ~ Rita Coolidge

His dick was hard as a rock and his heart was as soft as pudding for this girl.
She was taking deep, unhurried breaths when he quietly did as she'd told him. I love you, Dove Glitch. ~ Debra Anastasia

The only queer people are those who don't love anybody. ~ Rita Mae Brown

Not one man in a beer commercial has a beerbelly. ~ Rita Rudner

You have to come to terms with loving your body. ~ Rita Ora

We are all familiar with the dove carrying an olive branch as a peace offering. The jewelry I've created pays tribute both to the messenger's noble mission and gardens as a refuge of peace and tranquility. ~ Paloma Picasso

Show me a writer, any writer, who hasn't suffered and I'll show you someone who writes in pastels as opposed to primary colors. ~ Rita Mae Brown

If a man prepares dinner for you and the salad contains three or more types of lettuce, he is serious. ~ Rita Rudner

the further humans move from nature, the crazier they get. In ~ Rita Mae Brown

No man is charming all of the time. Even Cary Grant is on record saying he wished he could be Cary Grant. ~ Rita Rudner

Being a Mum is a big job. ~ Rita Ora

It has memory's ear
that can hear without
having to hear.
Like the gyroscope's fall,
truly unequivocal
because trued by regnant certainty,
it is a power of
strong enchantment. It
is like the dove-
neck animated by
sun; it is memory's eye;
it's conscientious inconsistency. ~ Marianne Moore

I'm not very keen for doves or hawks. I think we need more owls. ~ George Aiken

When I look back on my marriages, or the breakups, sure I know the pain I went through, but that's part of life and it has its own value. ~ Rita Hayworth

I didn't believe you when you said there was a red statue that read "LOVE," with the LO stacked on top of the VE. LO VE It sounded like something out of one of the old fairy tales you used to tell me when I was a little girl. I thought you were kidding when you said people in the past believed in love so much that they made statues to celebrate it, so they wouldn't forget to LOVE ... well, that seemed kind of ridiculous - but when we dove down and you shined the thermal lantern, and it turned out to be true, I felt like there were so many possibilities in the world - like I'm only beginning to discover what's achievable. Maybe I will find a pure love - like what you and Mom have. ~ Matthew Quick

Individuality in dressing is not important to men. If they all look alike it means they haven't made a mistake. ~ Rita Rudner

It's you," she murmured, staring at his eyes, a fine, dove gray.
He smiled. "Of course, it's me. Let's get you back to your boat. ~ Cheryl Sterling

Today I seen a dove collide into the sunset, on the way to heaven and a ruined raven chewing on death, over the pavement. ~ Anthony Liccione

There are times when the state department says not to travel to a place, but I'll look it up and find out for myself. For years, even Bali was off the list because they had been bombed. I totally ignored that. ~ Rita Gelman

Do you think it's possible that love multiples? We're taught to think it divides. There's only so much to go around, like diamonds. It multiples. ~ Rita Mae Brown