Home
Authors
Tags
App
Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App
" 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. "
Rita Dove
Life
College
Write
Related Quotes:
" 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
God
Thought
Loved
" For many years, I thought a poem was a whisper overheard, not an aria heard. "
Rita Dove
Whisper
Poem
Heard
" I'm a night person. My best times are midnight to six, actually. "
Rita Dove
Midnight
Best
Night
" I think one of the things that people tend to forget is that poets do write out of life. It isn't some set piece that then gets put up on the shelf, but that the impetus, the real instigation for poetry is everything that's happening around us. "
Rita Dove
Forget
Us
Think
" One definition of eternity is that we are not alone on this planet, that there are those who've gone before and those who will come, and that there is a community of spirits. "
Rita Dove
Eternity
Community
Will
" 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
Art
How
Literature
" It makes me furious to hear haters of all skin colors - especially Christian, Jewish, and Muslim fundamentalists - deride other people because of their different beliefs and lifestyles. "
Rita Dove
Colors
Christian
People
" My favorite poets may not be your bread and butter. I have more favorite poems than favorite poets. "
Rita Dove
May
Favorite
Than
" I think children have talent and insight, but it gets beaten out of them. "
Rita Dove
Children
Insight
Out
" I believe people may have a predisposition for artistic creativity. It doesn't mean they're going to make it. "
Rita Dove
People
Creativity
I Believe
" 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
My Life
Amazing
Me
" 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
Poetry
Plan
Library
" I didn't know writers could be real live people, because I never knew any writers. "
Rita Dove
Be Real
Know
Never
" 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. "
Rita Dove
Going
You
Write
" 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
Love
Poem
Process
" 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
People
American Dream
American
" I make a discovery in a poem as I write it. "
Rita Dove
Write
Discovery
I Write
" 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
Always
Away
Loved
" 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
Twilight
World
Page
" The joy of working at something to find out what it means to me is what I grew up with. "
Rita Dove
Joy
Up
Working
" I carry a notebook with me everywhere. But that's only the first step. "
Rita Dove
Only
Step
Carry
" It's the combination of the intimate and the public that I find so exciting about being poet laureate. "
Rita Dove
Public
Being
Poet
" 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
Up
Black And White
People
" 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. "
Rita Dove
Library
Feeling
Choose
" 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
Find
Adversity
Oppression
" 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
Poet
Most
Dream
" 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
Read
Find
Love
" To practice your scales, so to speak, in order play the symphony, is what you have to do as a young poet. "
Rita Dove
Play
Young
You
" What writing does is to reveal. "
Rita Dove
Does
Reveal
Writing
" When we are touched by something it's as if we're being brushed by an angel's wings. "
Rita Dove
Angel
Being
Something