Rita Dove Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• 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

  Art, Imagination, Imagine

  22 Copy quote

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

  Rita Dove

  Intimate Moments, Details, Hinges

  8 Copy quote

• To me, a poem is almost like someone whispering to another person, or you hear the whispering in your head. I hope with my own poems that the reader feels a connection, soul to soul, that'll help us all feel a little less alone on the planet. And it does have the power to direct change. A writer can make the word 'dark' be something positive. You can relieve a word like 'hysterical' of its misogynistic implications. You can make the language your own. That's what poetry is about.

  Rita Dove

  Dark, Soul, Littles

  14 Copy quote

• 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

  Children, Book, Pages Turning

  Rita Dove (1993). “Selected Poems”, Vintage

  23 Copy quote

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

  Rita Dove

  World, Talismans

  Rita Dove (2016). “Collected Poems: 1974-2004”, p.185, W. W. Norton & Company

  8 Copy quote

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

  Rita Dove

  Clouds, Minutes, Ecstasy

  Rita Dove, Earl G. Ingersoll (2003). “Conversations with Rita Dove”, p.138, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  22 Copy quote

• 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

  Notebook, Eye, Writing

  Big Think Interview, bigthink.com. November 19, 2009.

  12 Copy quote

• If you can't be free, be a mystery.

  Rita Dove

  Mystery, Ifs

  "Canary" l. 1, 11 (1989)

  8 Copy quote

• Libraries are where it all begins.

  Rita Dove

  Library, Librarian

  Rita Dove, Earl G. Ingersoll (2003). “Conversations with Rita Dove”, p.141, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  15 Copy quote

• 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.

  Rita Dove

  Writing, Discovery, Never Quit

  Big Think Interview, bigthink.com. November 19, 2009.

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  Blessing, Flames, Names

  Rita Dove (2016). “Collected Poems: 1974-2004”, p.281, W. W. Norton & Company

  8 Copy quote

• 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

  Moving, Thinking, Race

  Big Think Interview, bigthink.com. November 19, 2009.

  4 Copy quote

• I never think of my audience when I write a poem. I try to write out of whatever is haunting me; in order for a poem to feel authentic, I have to feel I'm treading on very dangerous ground, which can mean that the resulting revelations may prove hurtful to other people. The time for thinking about that kind of guilt or any collective sense of responsibility, however, occurs much later in the creative process, after the poem is finished.

  Rita Dove

  Writing, Mean, Responsibility

  Interview with M. Wynn Thomas, www.english.illinois.edu. August 12, 1995.

  13 Copy quote

• My childhood library was small enough not to be intimidating. And yet I felt the whole world was contained in those two rooms. I could walk any aisle and smell wisdom.

  Rita Dove

  Two, Smell, Childhood

  11 Copy quote

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

  Rita Dove

  Children, Thinking, Talent

  Interview with Jesse Kornbluth for "The Book Report", www.math.buffalo.edu. April 8, 1997.

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Thinking, Interesting, Advice

  Big Think Interview, bigthink.com. November 19, 2009.

  9 Copy quote

• 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

  Christian, Skin Color, People

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  Space, Fit, Grows

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  Kings, Black And White, Rights

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  Reading, Thinking, Love Of Reading

  6 Copy quote

• What writing does is to reveal.

  Rita Dove

  Writing, Doe

  4 Copy quote

• My inspiration comes from everywhere, just walking down the street and I never know where it's going to come from, so I keep a notebook with me at all times and the only criteria for anything making it into that notebook is if it stops me in my tracks for even an instant, if it catches my eye or my ear and I just write it down.

  Rita Dove

  Notebook, Inspiration, Writing

  Big Think Interview, bigthink.com. November 19, 2009.

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Revision, Poet, Process

  Rita Dove, Earl G. Ingersoll (2003). “Conversations with Rita Dove”, p.136, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  9 Copy quote

• Creative writing and literacy go hand and hand.

  Rita Dove

  Writing, Hands, Creative

  9 Copy quote

• 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

  Thinking, Shadow, Cheerful

  Rita Dove, Earl G. Ingersoll (2003). “Conversations with Rita Dove”, p.141, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  9 Copy quote

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