Quotes by Rita Dove
Being true to yourself really means being true to all the complexities of the human spirit.
Being Poet Laureate made me realize I was capable of a larger voice. There is a more public utterance I can make as a poet.
I've always been intrigued by the way history works, the way we decide what is mentioned.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I prefer to explore the most intimate moments, the smaller, crystallized details we all hinge our lives on.
Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.
On the day that will always belong to you, lunar clockwork had faltered...
