Love Quote by Nikki Giovanni

Giovanni flips a familiar moral script with the clean precision of a poet who knows how sentiment can become self-flattery. “Responsible for those we love” is the socially approved version of care: it flatters the lover as benevolent, choosing duty like a virtue badge. Her pivot - “responsible for those who love us” - is the harder claim, because it relocates power. If someone loves you, you become the influential party whether you asked for it or not. You can’t hide behind innocence; affection makes you consequential.

The line’s quiet bite is in “Some say” versus “Others know.” Giovanni frames the first idea as received wisdom, the kind of Hallmark ethics that lets people keep their self-image intact. The second is presented as earned knowledge - the insight that comes from experience with lopsided devotion, with the way admiration can be exploited, ignored, or casually mishandled. Responsibility here isn’t about romantic chivalry; it’s about emotional stewardship.

As a Black poet who came of age in the turbulence of civil rights and Black Arts politics, Giovanni has long written about love as both refuge and risk, a force shaped by history, vulnerability, and survival. In that context, “who loves us” lands like a warning against the easy freedoms of being adored. It asks for reciprocity, yes, but more pointedly for restraint: don’t weaponize your desirability, don’t accept devotion as a resource, don’t pretend you aren’t shaping someone else’s interior weather.