All time Quote by Rita Dove

“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

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More by Rita Dove

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

Rita Dove

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Courage has nothing to do with our determination to be great. It has to do with what we decide in that moment when we…

Rita Dove

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Libraries are where it all begins.

Rita Dove

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To write for PC reasons, because you think you ought to be dealing with this subject, is never going to yield anything that is…

Rita Dove

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All of us have moments in our childhood where we come alive for the first time. And we go back to those moments and…

Rita Dove

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The First Book: 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 started; remember learning to use knife and fork? Dig in: you'll never reach bottom. It's not like it's the end of the world --…

Rita Dove

Sometimes a word is found so right it trembles at the slightest explanation.

Rita Dove

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Listen how they say your name. If they can't say that right, there's no way they're going to know how to treat you proper,…

Rita Dove

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People write me from all over the country, asking me, and sometimes even telling me, what they think a poet laureate should do. I…

Rita Dove

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Creative writing and literacy go hand and hand.

Rita Dove

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There are distinct duties of a poet laureate. I plan a reading series at the Library of Congress and advise the librarian. The rest…

Rita Dove

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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,…

Rita Dove

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