Quotes by Rita Dove

“Three miles from my adopted city lies a village where I came to peace.The world there was a calm place, even the great Danube no more than a pale ribbon tossed onto the landscapeby a girls careless...”

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

“NexusI wrote stubbornly into the evening.At the window, a giant praying mantisrubbed his monkey wrench head against the glass,begging vacantly with pale eyes;and the commas leapt at me like wormsor...”

“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.”

“If our children are unable to voice what they mean, no one will know how they feel. If they cant imagine a different world, they are stumbling through a darkness made all the more sinister by its l...”

“The First BookOpen it.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 starte...”

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

“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 ...”

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

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

“My father is a chemist, my mother was a homemaker. My parents instilled in us the feeling that learning was the most exciting thing that could happen to you, and it never ends.”

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

“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 scientist I have met who has been a success has had to imagine.”

“You have to imagine it possible before you can see something. You can have the evidence right in front of you, but if you can't imagine something that has never existed before, it's impossible.”

“Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.”

“Have you ever heard a good joke? If you've ever heard someone just right, with the right pacing, then you're already on the way to poetry. It's about using words in very precise ways and using gest...”

“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.”