There are times in life when, instead of complaining, you do something about your complaints.
Rita DoveRead
To practice your scales, so to speak, in order play the symphony, is what you have to do as a young poet.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Young poets need to hone their skills through practice to master their craft.
Rita Dove emphasizes the importance of foundational practices, like practicing scales in music, for young poets. Just as musicians must train their fingers to play complex pieces, poets must develop their writing skills through consistent practice to ultimately create beautiful and meaningful poetry.
Themes
PracticePoetrySkillsYoungExcellence
In practice
Example use cases
During a workshop, a mentor could inspire young poets by sharing this quote to highlight the importance of daily practice.
More from Rita Dove
All quotes →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 DoveRead
As an African-American, as a woman, I think that I've been sensitized to the way in which history privileges the white male and the way in which certain aspects of history, the things that we are taught in school, the things that are handed down, never, never entered the picture though they might have been very important.
Rita DoveRead
If our children are unable to voice what they mean, no one will know how they feel. If they can’t imagine a different world, they are stumbling through a darkness made all the more sinister by its lack of reference points. For a young person growing up in America’s alienated neighborhoods, there can be no greater empowerment than to dare to speak from the heart — and then to discover that one is not alone in ones feelings.
Rita DoveRead
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 DoveRead
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 DoveRead
Similar quotes
Taking trains and trams in Berlin, I noticed people reading. Books, I mean - not pocket-size devices that bleep as if censorious, on which even Shakespeare scans like a spreadsheet.
Joshua CohenRead
In a high-IQ job pool, soft skills like discipline, drive and empathy mark those who emerge as outstanding.
Daniel GolemanRead
You are more likely to learn something by finding surprises in your own behavior than by hearing surprising facts about people in general.
Daniel KahnemanRead
I went through withdrawal when I got out of graduate school. It's what you learn, what you think. That's all that counts.
Maya LinRead
To be taught to read—what is the use of that, if you know not whether what you read is false or true? To be taught to write or to speak—but what is the use of speaking, if you have nothing to say? To be taught to think—nay, what is the use of being able to think, if you have nothing to think of? But to be taught to see is to gain word and thought at once, and both true.
John RuskinRead
Reading and writing, like everything else, improve with practice. And, of course, if there are no young readers and writers, there will shortly be no older ones. Literacy will be dead, and democracy - which many believe goes hand in hand with it - will be dead as well.
Margaret AtwoodRead