Top 62 Quotes by Rita Dove

It's unfortunate that sometimes in schools, there's this need to have things quantified and graded.

I write short stories, and I wrote a play.

What writing does is to reveal.

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

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.

One definition of eternity is that we are not alone on this planet, that there are those who've gone before and those who will come, and that there is a community of spirits.

I've always been intrigued by the way history works, the way we decide what is mentioned.

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

When we are touched by something it's as if we're being brushed by an angel's wings.

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!