Quotes By 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
I believe people may have a predisposition for artistic creativity. It doesn't mean they're going to make it.
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
It's unfortunate that sometimes in schools, there's this need to have things quantified and graded.
Rita Dove
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
It's the combination of the intimate and the public that I find so exciting about being poet laureate.
Rita Dove
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
There are times in life when, instead of complaining, you do something about your complaints.
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
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
All of us have moments in our childhood where we come alive for the first time. And we go back to those moments and think, This is when I became myself.
Rita Dove
People write me from all over the country, asking me, and sometimes even telling me, what they think a poet laureate should do. I found that immensely valuable.
Rita Dove
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.
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
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
I see a resurgence of interest in poetry. I am less optimistic about the prospects for the arts when it comes to federal funding.
Rita Dove
My favorite poets may not be your bread and butter. I have more favorite poems than favorite poets.
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
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
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
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
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 gesture.
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