Maya Angelou

“If you have only one smile in you give it to the people you love.”

“If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude.”

“Politicians must set their aims for the high ground and according to our various leanings, Democratic, Republican, Independent, we will follow. Politicians must be told if they continue to sink into the mud of obscenity, they will proceed alone.”

“Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told: 'I'm with you kid. Let's go.'”

“The desire to reach for the stars is ambitious. The desire to reach hearts is wise.”

“There's a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure the truth.”

“Segregation shaped me; education liberated me.”

“Eating is so intimate. It's very sensual. When you invite someone to sit at your table and you want to cook for them, you're inviting a person into your life.”

“It is impossible to struggle for civil rights, equal rights for blacks, without including whites. Because equal rights, fair play, justice, are all like the air: we all have it, or none of us has it. That is the truth of it.”

“I long for the time when all human history is taught as one history, because it really is.”

“Won't it be wonderful when black history and native American history and Jewish history and all of U.S. history is taught from one book. Just U.S. history.”

“We are braver and wiser because they existed, those strong women and strong men... We are who we are because they were who they were. It's wise to know where you come from, who called your name.”

“Each of us has the right and the responsibility to assess the roads which lie ahead, and those over which we have traveled, and if the future road looms ominous or unpromising, and the roads back uninviting, then we need to gather our resolve and, carrying only the necessary baggage, step off that road into another direction. If the new choice is also unpalatable, without embarrassment, we must be ready to change that as well.”

“Ask for what you want and be prepared to get it!”

“I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself.”

“We allow our ignorance to prevail upon us and make us think we can survive alone, alone in patches, alone in groups, alone in races, even alone in genders.”

“I was very blessed to have family and friends, but particularly family, who told me I was not only all right, I was just right, so I believe that my brain is a good one, and it's lasting me very well.”

“”

“My mom was a terrible parent of young children. And thank God - I thank God every time I think of it - I was sent to my paternal grandmother. Ah, but my mother was a great parent of a young adult.”

“I have found that among its other benefits, giving liberates the soul of the giver.”

“Our stories come from our lives and from the playwright's pen, the mind of the actor, the roles we create, the artistry of life itself and the quest for peace.”

“I am grateful to be a woman. I must have done something great in another life.”

“All great artists draw from the same resource: the human heart, which tells us that we are all more alike than we are unalike.”

“If we lose love and self respect for each other, this is how we finally die.”

“There is nothing so pitiful as a young cynic because he has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing.”

“I believe that every person is born with talent.”

“The more you know of your history, the more liberated you are.”

“Hold those things that tell your history and protect them. During slavery, who was able to read or write or keep anything? The ability to have somebody to tell your story to is so important. It says: 'I was here. I may be sold tomorrow. But you know I was here.'”

“I'm just someone who likes cooking and for whom sharing food is a form of expression.”

“Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope.”

“We can learn to see each other and see ourselves in each other and recognize that human beings are more alike than we are unalike.”

“Whenever something went wrong when I was young - if I had a pimple or if my hair broke - my mom would say, 'Sister mine, I'm going to make you some soup.' And I really thought the soup would make my pimple go away or my hair stronger.”

“In all my work, I try to say - 'You may be given a load of sour lemons, why not try to make a dozen lemon meringue pies?'”

“Segregation shaped me; education liberated me.”

“All men are prepared to accomplish the incredible if their ideals are threatened.”

“There is a very fine line between loving life and being greedy for it.”

“I know that when I pray, something wonderful happens. Not just to the person or persons for whom I'm praying, but also something wonderful happens to me. I'm grateful that I'm heard.”

“Segregation shaped me; education liberated me.”

“I'm not a writer who teaches. I'm a teacher who writes.”

“My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.”

“I did work in a strip club, but I didn't strip. I danced, and I became very popular.”

“Life is going to give you just what you put in it. Put your whole heart in everything you do, and pray, then you can wait.”

“Most people don't grow up. It's too damn difficult. What happens is most people get older. That's the truth of it. They honor their credit cards, they find parking spaces, they marry, they have the nerve to have children, but they don't grow up.”

“If you're serious, you really understand that it's important that you laugh as much as possible and admit that you're the funniest person you ever met. You have to laugh. Admit that you're funny. Otherwise, you die in solemnity.”

“You can't forgive without loving. And I don't mean sentimentality. I don't mean mush. I mean having enough courage to stand up and say, 'I forgive. I'm finished with it.'”

“Segregation shaped me; education liberated me.”

“Life loves the liver of it.”

“Stepping onto a brand-new path is difficult, but not more difficult than remaining in a situation, which is not nurturing to the whole woman.”

“The need for change bulldozed a road down the center of my mind.”

“You may write me down in history with your bitter, twisted lines. You may trod me in the very dirt, but still, like dust, I'll rise.”

“It's still scary every time I go back to the past. Each morning, my heart catches. When I get there, I remember how the light was, where the draft was coming from, what odors were in the air. When I write, I get all the weeping out.”

“I love the song 'I Hope You Dance' by Lee Ann Womack. I was going to write that song, but someone beat me to it.”

“My grandmother took me to church on Sunday all day long, every Sunday into the night. Then Monday evening was the missionary meeting. Tuesday evening was usher board meeting. Wednesday evening was prayer meeting. Thursday evening was visit the sick. Friday evening was choir practice. I mean, and at all those gatherings, we sang.”

“I created myself. I have taught myself so much.”

“Once you appreciate one of your blessings, one of your senses, your sense of hearing, then you begin to respect the sense of seeing and touching and tasting, you learn to respect all the senses.”

“There's a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure truth.”

“Courage - you develop courage by doing small things like just as if you wouldn't want to pick up a 100-pound weight without preparing yourself.”

“In the flush of love's light”

“On Saturday afternoons when all the things are done in the house and there's no real work to be done, I play Bach and Chopin and turn it up real loudly and get a good bottle of chardonnay and sit out on my deck and look out at the garden.”

“I wasn't a pretty girl. I was six feet tall at 15, you know.”

“I'm just like you - I want to be a good human being. I'm doing my best, and I'm working at it. And I'm trying to be a Christian. I'm always amazed when people walk up to me and say, 'I'm a Christian.' I always think, 'Already? You've already got it?' I'm working at it. And at my age, I'll still be working at it at 96.”

“What is a fear of living? It's being preeminently afraid of dying. It is not doing what you came here to do, out of timidity and spinelessness. The antidote is to take full responsibility for yourself - for the time you take up and the space you occupy. If you don't know what you're here to do, then just do some good.”

“I'm very, very serious - I'm serious enough not to take myself too seriously. That means I can be completely wedded to the moment. But when I leave that moment, I want to be completely wedded to the next moment.”

“I answer the heroic question, 'Death, where is thy sting?' with 'It is in my heart and mind and memories.”

“Loving someone liberates the lover as well as the beloved. And that kind of love comes with age.”

“I always knew from that moment, from the time I found myself at home in that little segregated library in the South, all the way up until I walked up the steps of the New York City library, I always felt, in any town, if I can get to a library, I'll be OK. It really helped me as a child, and that never left me.”

“Whenever I want to laugh, I read a wonderful book, 'Children's Letters to God.' You can open it anywhere. One I read recently said, 'Dear God, thank you for the baby brother, but what I prayed for was a puppy.'”

“That's what you want to do? Then nothing beats a trial but a failure. Give it everything you've got. I've told you many times, 'Cant do is like Dont Care.' Neither of them have a home.”

“I refuse to allow any man-made differences to separate me from any other human beings.”

“All information belongs to everybody all the time. It should be available. It should be accessible to the child, to the woman, to the man, to the old person, to the semiliterate, to the presidents of universities, to everyone. It should be open.”

“I got my own back.”

“I've learned that you shouldn't go through life with a catcher's mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw something back.”

“I would be a liar, a hypocrite, or a fool - and I'm not any of those - to say that I don't write for the reader. I do. But for the reader who hears, who really will work at it, going behind what I seem to say. So I write for myself and that reader who will pay the dues.”

“We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated.”

“Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him.”

“It’s the fire in my eyes,”

“Nothing succeeds like success. Get a little success, and then just get a little more.”

“Information helps you to see that you're not alone. That there's somebody in Mississippi and somebody in Tokyo who all have wept, who've all longed and lost, who've all been happy. So the library helps you to see, not only that you are not alone, but that you're not really any different from everyone else.”

“The love of the family, the love of one person can heal. It heals the scars left by a larger society. A massive, powerful society.”

“I learned a long time ago the wisest thing I can do is be on my own side, be an advocate for myself and others like me.”

“Independence is a heady draught, and if you drink it in your youth, it can have the same effect on the brain as young wine does. It does not matter that its taste is not always appealing. It is addictive and with each drink you want more.”

“I can be changed by what happens to me. But I refuse to be reduced by it.”

“Elimination of illiteracy is as serious an issue to our history as the abolition of slavery.”

“During bad circumstances, which is the human inheritance, you must decide not to be reduced. You have your humanity, and you must not allow anything to reduce that. We are obliged to know we are global citizens. Disasters remind us we are world citizens, whether we like it or not.”

“Segregation shaped me; education liberated me.”

“A black person grows up in this country - and in many places - knowing that racism will be as familiar as salt to the tongue. Also, it can be as dangerous as too much salt. I think that you must struggle for betterment for yourself and for everyone.”

“At 50, I began to know who I was. It was like waking up to myself.”

“Everybody born comes from the Creator trailing wisps of glory. We come from the Creator with creativity. I think that each one of us is born with creativity.”

“You have to develop ways so that you can take up for yourself, and then you take up for someone else. And so sooner or later, you have enough courage to really stand up for the human race and say, 'I'm a representative.'”

“Children's talent to endure stems from their ignorance of alternatives.”

“If we don't plant the right things, we will reap the wrong things. It goes without saying. And you don't have to be, you know, a brilliant biochemist and you don't have to have an IQ of 150. Just common sense tells you to be kind, ninny, fool. Be kind.”

“All great achievements require time.”

“I respect myself and insist upon it from everybody. And because I do it, I then respect everybody, too.”

“Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends.”

“Segregation shaped me; education liberated me.”

“In the flush of love's light, we dare be brave. And suddenly we see that love costs all we are, and will ever be. Yet it is only love which sets us free.”

“Self-pity in its early stage is as snug as a feather mattress. Only when it hardens does it become uncomfortable.”

“The caged bird sings with a fearful trill,”

“For Africa to me... is more than a glamorous fact. It is a historical truth. No man can know where he is going unless he knows exactly where he has been and exactly how he arrived at his present place.”

“I'm grateful to intelligent people. That doesn't mean educated. That doesn't mean intellectual. I mean really intelligent. What black old people used to call 'mother wit' means intelligence that you had in your mother's womb. That's what you rely on. You know what's right to do.”

“Since time is the one immaterial object which we cannot influence—neither speed up nor slow down, add to nor diminish—it is an imponderably valuable gift.”

“We allow our ignorance to prevail upon us and make us think we can survive alone, alone in patches, alone in groups, alone in races, even alone in genders.”

“Bitterness is cancer - it eats upon the host. It doesn't do anything to the object of its displeasure.”

“Some critics will write 'Maya Angelou is a natural writer' - which is right after being a natural heart surgeon.”

“If you have only one smile in you give it to the people you love.”

“And if a person is religious, I think it's good, it helps you a bit. But if you're not, at least you can have the sense that there is a condition inside you which looks at the stars with amazement and awe.”

“Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope.”

“Segregation shaped me; education liberated me.”

“At fifteen life had taught me undeniably that surrender, in its place, was as honorable as resistance, especially if one had no choice.”

“We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated.”

“I sustain myself with the love of family.”

“The loss of young first love is so painful that it borders on the ludicrous.”

“My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.”

“There is a very fine line between loving life and being greedy for it.”

“As far as I knew white women were never lonely, except in books. White men adored them, Black men desired them and Black women worked for them.”

“I'm convinced of this: Good done anywhere is good done everywhere. For a change, start by speaking to people rather than walking by them like they're stones that don't matter. As long as you're breathing, it's never too late to do some good.”

“The poetry you read has been written for you, each of you - black, white, Hispanic, man, woman, gay, straight.”

“I've learned that you shouldn't go through life with a catcher's mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw something back.”

“I speak to the black experience, but I am always talking about the human condition.”

“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”

“Whenever something went wrong when I was young - if I had a pimple or if my hair broke - my mom would say, 'Sister mine, I'm going to make you some soup.' And I really thought the soup would make my pimple go away or my hair stronger.”

“When I write, I tend to twist my hair. Something for my small mind to do, I guess.”

“You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.”

“If you're serious, you really understand that it's important that you laugh as much as possible and admit that you're the funniest person you ever met. You have to laugh. Admit that you're funny. Otherwise, you die in solemnity.”

“I do like to have guns around. I don't like to carry them. But I like - if somebody is going to come into my house and I have not put out the welcome mat, I want to stop them.”

“History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.”

“When the human race neglects its weaker members, when the family neglects its weakest one - it's the first blow in a suicidal movement. I see the neglect in cities around the country, in poor white children in West Virginia and Virginia and Kentucky - in the big cities, too, for that matter.”

“What humility does for one is it reminds us that there are people before me. I have already been paid for. And what I need to do is prepare myself so that I can pay for someone else who has yet to come but who may be here and needs me.”

“Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future and renders the present inaccessible.”

“Effective action is always unjust.”

“How important it is for us to recognize and celebrate our heroes and she-roes!”

“It's one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself, to forgive. Forgive everybody.”

“I believe we are still so innocent. The species are still so innocent that a person who is apt to be murdered believes that the murderer, just before he puts the final wrench on his throat, will have enough compassion to give him one sweet cup of water.”

“I learned a long time ago the wisest thing I can do is be on my own side, be an advocate for myself and others like me.”

“I'm interested in women's health because I'm a woman. I'd be a darn fool not to be on my own side.”

“If we lose love and self respect for each other, this is how we finally die.”

“Fighting for one's freedom, struggling towards being free, is like struggling to be a poet or a good Christian or a good Jew or a good Muslim or good Zen Buddhist. You work all day long and achieve some kind of level of success by nightfall, go to sleep and wake up the next morning with the job still to be done. So you start all over again.”

“What is a fear of living? It's being preeminently afraid of dying. It is not doing what you came here to do, out of timidity and spinelessness. The antidote is to take full responsibility for yourself - for the time you take up and the space you occupy. If you don't know what you're here to do, then just do some good.”

“Whatever you want to do, if you want to be great at it, you have to love it and be able to make sacrifices for it.”

“The more you know of your history, the more liberated you are.”

“Life loves the liver of it.”

“Encouragement to all women is - let us try to offer help before we have to offer therapy. That is to say, let's see if we can't prevent being ill by trying to offer a love of prevention before illness.”

“Eating is so intimate. It's very sensual. When you invite someone to sit at your table and you want to cook for them, you're inviting a person into your life.”

“If you're a human being, you can attempt to do what other human beings have done. We don't understand talent any more than we understand electricity.”

“There is a very fine line between loving life and being greedy for it.”

“It is this belief in a power larger than myself and other than myself which allows me to venture into the unknown and even the unknowable.”

“Segregation shaped me; education liberated me.”

“It's good to remember that in crises, natural crises, human beings forget for awhile their ignorances, their biases, their prejudices. For a little while, neighbors help neighbors and strangers help strangers.”

“Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him.”

“When Great Trees Fall”

“I speak a number of languages, but none are more beautiful to me than English.”

“We are braver and wiser because they existed, those strong women and strong men... We are who we are because they were who they were. It's wise to know where you come from, who called your name.”

“My life has been long, and believing that life loves the liver of it, I have dared to try many things, sometimes trembling, but daring still.”

“I believe that every person is born with talent.”

“When I was 8 years old I became a mute and was a mute until I was 13, and I thought of my whole body as an ear, so I can go into a crowd and sit still and absorb all sound. That talent or ability has lasted and served me until today.”

“I have found that among its other benefits, giving liberates the soul of the giver.”

“I will not sit in a room with black people when the N word is used. I know it was meant to belittle a person, so I will not sit there and have that poison put on me. Now a black person can say, 'Oh, you know, I can use this word because I'm black.'”

“My great hope is to laugh as much as I cry; to get my work done and try to love somebody and have the courage to accept the love in return.”

“I wrote some of the worst poetry west from the Mississippi River, but I wrote. And I finally sometimes got it right.”

“I got my own back.”

“Modesty is a learned affectation. And as soon as life slams the modest person against the wall, that modesty drops.”

“Independence is a heady draught, and if you drink it in your youth, it can have the same effect on the brain as young wine does. It does not matter that its taste is not always appealing. It is addictive and with each drink you want more.”

“I keep a hotel room in my town, although I have a large house. And I go there at about 5:30 in the morning, and I start working. And I don't allow anybody to come in that room. I work on yellow pads and with ballpoint pens. I keep a Bible, a thesaurus, a dictionary, and a bottle of sherry. I stay there until midday.”

“I am grateful to be a woman. I must have done something great in another life.”

“We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated.”

“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”

“I agree with Balzac and 19th-century writers, black and white, who say, 'I write for money.' Yes, I think everybody should be paid handsomely; I insist on it, and I pay people who work for me, or with me, handsomely.”

“The more you know of your history, the more liberated you are.”

“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”

“I'm grateful to intelligent people. That doesn't mean educated. That doesn't mean intellectual. I mean really intelligent. What black old people used to call 'mother wit' means intelligence that you had in your mother's womb. That's what you rely on. You know what's right to do.”

“It is a no-fail, incontrovertible reality: If you get, give. If you learn, teach. You can't do anything with that except do it.”

“All great artists draw from the same resource: the human heart, which tells us that we are all more alike than we are unalike.”

“My great hope is to laugh as much as I cry; to get my work done and try to love somebody and have the courage to accept the love in return.”

“I had given up some youth for knowledge, but my gain was more valuable than the loss.”

“When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”

“Shakespeare - I was very influenced - still am - by Shakespeare. I couldn't believe that a white man in the 16th century could so know my heart.”

“Try to be a rainbow in someone's cloud.”

“Segregation shaped me; education liberated me.”

“I work very hard, and I play very hard. I'm grateful for life. And I live it - I believe life loves the liver of it. I live it.”

“The truth is, no one of us can be free until everybody is free.”

“I long for the time when all human history is taught as one history, because it really is.”

“Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean.”

“I love the melodies in the Old Testament, how preachers highlight them when they read from the Scripture. But I was influenced forever by the New Testament. I love the Beatitudes, informing us that the meek shall inherit the earth.”

“If you find it in your heart to care for somebody else, you will have succeeded.”

“This is a wonderful day, I have never seen this one before.”

“If we accept being talked to any kind of a way, then we are telling ourselves we are not quite worth the best. And if we have the effrontery to talk to anybody with less than courtesy, we tell ourselves and the world we are not very intelligent.”

“A wise woman wishes to be no one's enemy; a wise woman refuses to be anyone's victim.”

“I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by the lapels. Life's a bitch. You've got to go out and kick ass.”

“Most plain girls are virtuous because of the scarcity of opportunity to be otherwise.”

“I think we all have empathy. We may not have enough courage to display it.”

“I am never proud to participate in violence, yet I know that each of us must care enough for ourselves that we can be ready and able to come to our own defense when and wherever needed.”

“It's one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself, to forgive. Forgive everybody.”

“Everyone has at least one story, and each of us is funny if we admit it. You have to admit you're the funniest person you've ever heard of.”

“There's a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure the truth.”

“Eating is so intimate. It's very sensual. When you invite someone to sit at your table and you want to cook for them, you're inviting a person into your life.”

“If I'm the people's poet, then I ought to be in people's hands - and, I hope, in their heart.”

“Courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you can't practice any other virtue consistently. You can practice any virtue erratically, but nothing consistently without courage.”

“If I walked into the kitchen without washing my hands as a kid, I'd hear a loud 'A-hem!' from my mother or grandmother. Now I count on other people to do the same.”

“I have a son, who is my heart. A wonderful young man, daring and loving and strong and kind.”

“Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him.”

“I never expected anyone to take care of me, but in my wildest dreams and juvenile yearnings, I wanted the house with the picket fence from June Allyson movies. I knew that was yearning like one yearns to fly.”

“The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.”

“I read the Bible to myself; I'll take any translation, any edition, and read it aloud, just to hear the language, hear the rhythm, and remind myself how beautiful English is.”

“The thing to do, it seems to me, is to prepare yourself so you can be a rainbow in somebody else's cloud. Somebody who may not look like you. May not call God the same name you call God - if they call God at all. I may not dance your dances or speak your language. But be a blessing to somebody. That's what I think.”

“Whatever you want to do, if you want to be great at it, you have to love it and be able to make sacrifices for it.”

“I could fall in love with a sumo wrestler if he told stories and made me laugh. Obviously, it would be easier if someone was African-American and lived next door and went to the same church. Because then I wouldn't have to translate.”

“It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength.”

“”

“For a person who grew up in the '30s and '40s in the segregated South, with so many doors closed without explanation to me, libraries and books said, 'Here I am, read me.' Over time I have learned I am at my best around books.”

“Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with deeper meaning.”

“I think I have had so much blessing - I've had my brother, who was brilliant - I think my family came closest to making a genius when they made my brother - Bailey was just all of that. He loved me.”

“If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform one million realities.”

“Easy reading is damn hard writing. But if it's right, it's easy. It's the other way round, too. If it's slovenly written, then it's hard to read. It doesn't give the reader what the careful writer can give the reader.”

“You can't forgive without loving. And I don't mean sentimentality. I don't mean mush. I mean having enough courage to stand up and say, 'I forgive. I'm finished with it.'”

“I'm just like you - I want to be a good human being. I'm doing my best, and I'm working at it. And I'm trying to be a Christian. I'm always amazed when people walk up to me and say, 'I'm a Christian.' I always think, 'Already? You've already got it?' I'm working at it. And at my age, I'll still be working at it at 96.”

“I believe that each of us comes from the Creator trailing wisps of glory.”

“The need for change bulldozed a road down the center of my mind.”

“Information helps you to see that you're not alone. That there's somebody in Mississippi and somebody in Tokyo who all have wept, who've all longed and lost, who've all been happy. So the library helps you to see, not only that you are not alone, but that you're not really any different from everyone else.”

“The thing to do, it seems to me, is to prepare yourself so you can be a rainbow in somebody else's cloud. Somebody who may not look like you. May not call God the same name you call God - if they call God at all. I may not dance your dances or speak your language. But be a blessing to somebody. That's what I think.”

“One of my lungs is half gone, and the other half, because I smoked for years, has a lesion. So I can't swim anymore and had the swimming pool covered over. Now it's what I call the dance pavilion, and so I and my friends sit out and put music on and watch people dance.”

“The need for change bulldozed a road down the center of my mind.”

“Politicians must set their aims for the high ground and according to our various leanings, Democratic, Republican, Independent, we will follow. Politicians must be told if they continue to sink into the mud of obscenity, they will proceed alone.”

“If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude.”

“Don't get older just to get wiser. If you get older, you will be wiser, I believe that - if you dare. But get older because it's fun!”

“All great achievements require time.”

“The idea is to write it so that people hear it and it slides through the brain and goes straight to the heart.”

“Loving someone liberates the lover as well as the beloved. And that kind of love comes with age.”

“I have great respect for the past. If you don't know where you've come from, you don't know where you're going. I have respect for the past, but I'm a person of the moment. I'm here, and I do my best to be completely centered at the place I'm at, then I go forward to the next place.”

“We write for the same reason that we walk, talk, climb mountains or swim the oceans - because we can. We have some impulse within us that makes us want to explain ourselves to other human beings. That's why we paint, that's why we dare to love someone - because we have the impulse to explain who we are.”

“Love is like a virus. It can happen to anybody at any time.”

“I have great respect for the past. If you don't know where you've come from, you don't know where you're going. I have respect for the past, but I'm a person of the moment. I'm here, and I do my best to be completely centered at the place I'm at, then I go forward to the next place.”

“I find relief from the questions only when I concede that I am not obliged to know everything. I remind myself it is sufficient to know what I know, and that what I know, may not always be true.”

“We are braver and wiser because they existed, those strong women and strong men... We are who we are because they were who they were. It's wise to know where you come from, who called your name.”

“Living in a state of terror was new to many white people in America, but black people have been living in a state of terror in this country for more than 400 years.”

“Nothing will work unless you do.”

“When a person is going through hell, and she encounters someone who went through hellish hell and survived, then she can say, 'Mine is not so bad as all that. She came through, and so can I.'”

“Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.”

“The most important thing I can tell you about aging is this: If you really feel that you want to have an off-the-shoulder blouse and some big beads and thong sandals and a dirndl skirt and a magnolia in your hair, do it. Even if you're wrinkled.”

“You are the sum total of everything you've ever seen, heard, eaten, smelled, been told, forgot - it's all there. Everything influences each of us, and because of that I try to make sure that my experiences are positive.”

“In so many ways, segregation shaped me, and education liberated me.”

“My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. That some people, unable to go to school, were more educated and more intelligent than college professors.”

“I know that I'm not the easiest person to live with. The challenge I put on myself is so great that the person I live with feels himself challenged. I bring a lot to bear, and I don't know how not to.”

“One isn't necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can't be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.”

“I like to have guns around. I don't like to carry them.”

“In so many ways, segregation shaped me, and education liberated me.”

“It is impossible to struggle for civil rights, equal rights for blacks, without including whites. Because equal rights, fair play, justice, are all like the air: we all have it, or none of us has it. That is the truth of it.”

“I know that one of the great arts that the writer develops is the art of saying, 'No. No, I'm finished. Bye.' And leaving it alone. I will not write it into the ground. I will not write the life out of it. I won't do that.”

“Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean.”

“If you have only one smile in you give it to the people you love.”

“There is nothing so pitiful as a young cynic because he has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing.”

“I like chicken a lot because chicken is generous - that is to say, it's obedient. It will do whatever you tell it to do.”

“Whatever you want to do, if you want to be great at it, you have to love it and be able to make sacrifices for it.”

“The love of the family, the love of one person can heal. It heals the scars left by a larger society. A massive, powerful society.”

“I think that that's the wisest thing - to prevent illness before we try to cure something.”

“We have to confront ourselves. Do we like what we see in the mirror? And, according to our light, according to our understanding, according to our courage, we will have to say yea or nay - and rise!”

“I'm just someone who likes cooking and for whom sharing food is a form of expression.”

“Hold those things that tell your history and protect them. During slavery, who was able to read or write or keep anything? The ability to have somebody to tell your story to is so important. It says: 'I was here. I may be sold tomorrow. But you know I was here.'”

“I was married a few times, and one of my husbands was jealous of me writing.”

“You may write me down in history with your bitter, twisted lines. You may trod me in the very dirt, but still, like dust, I'll rise.”

“Don't let the incidents which take place in life bring you low. And certainly don't whine. You can be brought low, that's OK, but don't be reduced by them. Just say, 'That's life.'”

“There's something which impels us to show our inner souls. The more courageous we are, the more we succeed in explaining what we know.”

“I'm not a writer who teaches. I'm a teacher who writes.”

“We can learn to see each other and see ourselves in each other and recognize that human beings are more alike than we are unalike.”

“A Woman in harmony with her spirit”

“The hope, the hope that lives in the breast of the black American, is just so tremendous that it overwhelms me sometimes.”

“I know that one of the great arts that the writer develops is the art of saying, 'No. No, I'm finished. Bye.' And leaving it alone. I will not write it into the ground. I will not write the life out of it. I won't do that.”

“Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told: 'I'm with you kid. Let's go.'”

“While I know myself as a creation of God, I am also obligated to realize and remember that everyone else and everything else are also God's creation.”

“Of course, there are those critics - New York critics as a rule - who say, 'Well, Maya Angelou has a new book out and of course it's good but then she's a natural writer.' Those are the ones I want to grab by the throat and wrestle to the floor because it takes me forever to get it to sing. I work at the language.”

“At 50, I began to know who I was. It was like waking up to myself.”

“Segregation shaped me; education liberated me.”

“I've conducted the Boston Pops! Imagine that! Me! Maya Angelou! I've sang and danced at La Scala!”

“I did work in a strip club, but I didn't strip. I danced, and I became very popular.”

“I am grateful to be a woman. I must have done something great in another life.”

“It's still scary every time I go back to the past. Each morning, my heart catches. When I get there, I remember how the light was, where the draft was coming from, what odors were in the air. When I write, I get all the weeping out.”

“Once you appreciate one of your blessings, one of your senses, your sense of hearing, then you begin to respect the sense of seeing and touching and tasting, you learn to respect all the senses.”

“Growing up, I decided, a long time ago, I wouldn't accept any manmade differences between human beings, differences made at somebody else's insistence or someone else's whim or convenience.”

“I created myself. I have taught myself so much.”

“I have a feeling that I make a very good friend, and I'm a good mother, and a good sister, and a good citizen. I am involved in life itself - all of it. And I have a lot of energy and a lot of nerve.”

“I know for sure that loves saves me and that it is here to save us all.”

“Achievement brings its own anticlimax.”

“When the human race neglects its weaker members, when the family neglects its weakest one - it's the first blow in a suicidal movement. I see the neglect in cities around the country, in poor white children in West Virginia and Virginia and Kentucky - in the big cities, too, for that matter.”

“I love a Hebrew National hot dog with an ice-cold Corona - no lime. If the phone rings, I won't answer until I'm done.”

“I was very blessed to have family and friends, but particularly family, who told me I was not only all right, I was just right, so I believe that my brain is a good one, and it's lasting me very well.”

“Segregation shaped me; education liberated me.”

“I've always written. There's a journal which I kept from about 9 years old. The man who gave it to me lived across the street from the store and kept it when my grandmother's papers were destroyed. I'd written some essays. I loved poetry, still do. But I really, really loved it then.”

“Autobiography is awfully seductive; it's wonderful. Once I got into it, I realized I was following a tradition established by Frederick Douglass - the slave narrative - speaking in the first-person singular, talking about the first-person plural, always saying 'I,' meaning 'we.'”

“I've learned that you shouldn't go through life with a catcher's mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw something back.”

“Somehow, we have come to the erroneous belief that we are all but flesh, blood, and bones, and that's all. So we direct our values to material things.”

“As far as I knew white women were never lonely, except in books. White men adored them, Black men desired them and Black women worked for them.”

“When the human race neglects its weaker members, when the family neglects its weakest one - it's the first blow in a suicidal movement. I see the neglect in cities around the country, in poor white children in West Virginia and Virginia and Kentucky - in the big cities, too, for that matter.”

“If we don't plant the right things, we will reap the wrong things. It goes without saying. And you don't have to be, you know, a brilliant biochemist and you don't have to have an IQ of 150. Just common sense tells you to be kind, ninny, fool. Be kind.”

“If you're serious, you really understand that it's important that you laugh as much as possible and admit that you're the funniest person you ever met. You have to laugh. Admit that you're funny. Otherwise, you die in solemnity.”

“If you want what you're saying heard, then take your time and say it so that the listener will actually hear it. You might save somebody's life. Your own, first.”

“I'm convinced of this: Good done anywhere is good done everywhere. For a change, start by speaking to people rather than walking by them like they're stones that don't matter. As long as you're breathing, it's never too late to do some good.”

“The fact that the adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amazement, distaste and even belligerance. It is seldom accepted as an inevitable outcome of the struggle won by survivors, and deserves respect if not enthusiastic acceptance.”

“Won't it be wonderful when black history and native American history and Jewish history and all of U.S. history is taught from one book. Just U.S. history.”

“Growing up, my grandmother did not want worldly music in the house. Then when I went out to California, I started listening to Spanish music, mostly Mexican music. But were I in Egypt, I would listen to the music of the people, or if I was in Italy, I'd listen to Italian music.”

“Information helps you to see that you're not alone. That there's somebody in Mississippi and somebody in Tokyo who all have wept, who've all longed and lost, who've all been happy. So the library helps you to see, not only that you are not alone, but that you're not really any different from everyone else.”

“It's good to remember that in crises, natural crises, human beings forget for awhile their ignorances, their biases, their prejudices. For a little while, neighbors help neighbors and strangers help strangers.”

“Independence is a heady draught, and if you drink it in your youth, it can have the same effect on the brain as young wine does. It does not matter that its taste is not always appealing. It is addictive and with each drink you want more.”

“Don't let the incidents which take place in life bring you low. And certainly don't whine. You can be brought low, that's OK, but don't be reduced by them. Just say, 'That's life.'”

“Most people don't grow up. It's too damn difficult. What happens is most people get older. That's the truth of it. They honor their credit cards, they find parking spaces, they marry, they have the nerve to have children, but they don't grow up.”

“It's so tedious writing cookbooks or writing the recipes because I've never been much of a measurer. But to write a book, you have to measure everything.”

“Find a beautiful piece of art. If you fall in love with Van Gogh or Matisse or John Oliver Killens, or if you fall love with the music of Coltrane, the music of Aretha Franklin, or the music of Chopin - find some beautiful art and admire it, and realize that that was created by human beings just like you, no more human, no less.”

“Whenever something went wrong when I was young - if I had a pimple or if my hair broke - my mom would say, 'Sister mine, I'm going to make you some soup.' And I really thought the soup would make my pimple go away or my hair stronger.”

“In a magazine, one can get - from cover to cover - 15 to 20 different ideas about life and how to live it.”

“Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends.”

“It's very important to know the neighbor next door and the people down the street and the people in another race.”

“I respect myself and insist upon it from everybody. And because I do it, I then respect everybody, too.”

“If you will have a person enslaved, the first thing you must do is convince yourself that the person is subhuman. The second thing you have to do is convince your allies so you'll have some help, and the third and probably unkindest cut of all is to convince that person that he or she is subhuman and deserves it.”

“In so many ways, segregation shaped me, and education liberated me.”

“I love wisdom. And you can never be great at anything unless you love it. Not be in love with it, but love the thing, admire the thing. And it seems that if you love the thing, and you don't just want to possess it, it will find you.”

“Writing and cookery are just two different means of communication.”

“The loss of young first love is so painful that it borders on the ludicrous.”

“The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.”

“The sadness of the women's movement is that they don't allow the necessity of love. See, I don't personally trust any revolution where love is not allowed.”

“I'm convinced of this: Good done anywhere is good done everywhere. For a change, start by speaking to people rather than walking by them like they're stones that don't matter. As long as you're breathing, it's never too late to do some good.”

“On Saturday afternoons when all the things are done in the house and there's no real work to be done, I play Bach and Chopin and turn it up real loudly and get a good bottle of chardonnay and sit out on my deck and look out at the garden.”

“What you're supposed to do when you don't like a thing is change it. If you can't change it, change the way you think about it. Don't complain.”

“Soft you day, be velvet soft,”

“All men are prepared to accomplish the incredible if their ideals are threatened.”

“I know that when I pray, something wonderful happens. Not just to the person or persons for whom I'm praying, but also something wonderful happens to me. I'm grateful that I'm heard.”

“I'm always disappointed when people don't live up to their potential. I know that a number of people look down on themselves and consequently on everybody who looks like them. But that, too, can change.”

“My grandmother took me to church on Sunday all day long, every Sunday into the night. Then Monday evening was the missionary meeting. Tuesday evening was usher board meeting. Wednesday evening was prayer meeting. Thursday evening was visit the sick. Friday evening was choir practice. I mean, and at all those gatherings, we sang.”

“I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by the lapels.”

“Don't get older just to get wiser. If you get older, you will be wiser, I believe that - if you dare. But get older because it's fun!”

“When younger writers and poets, musicians and painters are weakened by a stemming of funds, they come to me saddened, not as full of dreams and excitement and ideas. I am then weakened and diminished, and made less rich.”

“We allow our ignorance to prevail upon us and make us think we can survive alone, alone in patches, alone in groups, alone in races, even alone in genders.”

“Those of us who submitted or surrendered our ideas and dreams and identities to the 'leaders' must take back our rights, our identities, our responsibilities.”

“We write for the same reason that we walk, talk, climb mountains or swim the oceans - because we can. We have some impulse within us that makes us want to explain ourselves to other human beings. That's why we paint, that's why we dare to love someone - because we have the impulse to explain who we are.”

“In all my work, in the movies I write, the lyrics, the poetry, the prose, the essays, I am saying that we may encounter many defeats - maybe it's imperative that we encounter the defeats - but we are much stronger than we appear to be and maybe much better than we allow ourselves to be. Human beings are more alike than unalike.”

“I refuse to allow any man-made differences to separate me from any other human beings.”

“I think a number of the leaders are, whether you like it or not, in the hip-hop generation. And when they understand enough, they'll do wonders. I count on them.”

“I believe that each of us comes from the Creator trailing wisps of glory.”

“Early on, I was so impressed with Charles Dickens. I grew up in the South, in a little village in Arkansas, and the whites in my town were really mean, and rude. Dickens, I could tell, wouldn't be a man who would curse me out and talk to me rudely.”

“Elimination of illiteracy is as serious an issue to our history as the abolition of slavery.”

“Living well is an art that can be developed: a love of life and ability to take great pleasure from small offerings and assurance that the world owes you nothing and that every gift is exactly that, a gift. ”

“My mom was a terrible parent of young children. And thank God - I thank God every time I think of it - I was sent to my paternal grandmother. Ah, but my mother was a great parent of a young adult.”

“When I was 8 years old I became a mute and was a mute until I was 13, and I thought of my whole body as an ear, so I can go into a crowd and sit still and absorb all sound. That talent or ability has lasted and served me until today.”

“Autobiography is awfully seductive; it's wonderful. Once I got into it, I realized I was following a tradition established by Frederick Douglass - the slave narrative - speaking in the first-person singular, talking about the first-person plural, always saying 'I,' meaning 'we.'”

“Easy reading is damn hard writing. But if it's right, it's easy. It's the other way round, too. If it's slovenly written, then it's hard to read. It doesn't give the reader what the careful writer can give the reader.”

“Black people comprehend the South. We understand its weight. It has rested on our backs... I knew that my heart would break if ever I put my foot down on that soil, moist, still, with old hurts. I had to face the fear/loathing at its source or it would consume me whole.”

“Most plain girls are virtuous because of the scarcity of opportunity to be otherwise.”

“Segregation shaped me; education liberated me.”

“At one time in my life, from the time I was seven until I was about 13, I didn't speak. I only spoke to my brother. The reason I didn't speak: I had been molested, and I told the name of the molester to my brother who told it to the family.”

“I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself.”

“The terrorist action of 9/11 gave birth to President Obama's entry to the White House. Not directly, but indirectly.”

“Life loves the liver of it.”

“The only thing is, people have to develop courage. It is most important of all the virtues. Because without courage, you can't practice any other virtues consistently.”

“The idea is to write it so that people hear it and it slides through the brain and goes straight to the heart.”

“I liked to write from the time I was about 12 or 13. I loved to read. And since I only spoke to my brother, I would write down my thoughts. And I think I wrote some of the worst poetry west of the Rockies. But by the time I was in my 20s, I found myself writing little essays and more poetry - writing at writing.”

“During bad circumstances, which is the human inheritance, you must decide not to be reduced. You have your humanity, and you must not allow anything to reduce that. We are obliged to know we are global citizens. Disasters remind us we are world citizens, whether we like it or not.”

“The best comfort food will always be greens, cornbread, and fried chicken.”

“Our stories come from our lives and from the playwright's pen, the mind of the actor, the roles we create, the artistry of life itself and the quest for peace.”

“Whenever something went wrong when I was young - if I had a pimple or if my hair broke - my mom would say, 'Sister mine, I'm going to make you some soup.' And I really thought the soup would make my pimple go away or my hair stronger.”

“Whenever I'm around some who is modest, I think, 'Run like hell and all of fire.' You don't want modesty, you want humility.”

“Whenever I want to laugh, I read a wonderful book, 'Children's Letters to God.' You can open it anywhere. One I read recently said, 'Dear God, thank you for the baby brother, but what I prayed for was a puppy.'”

“I had given up some youth for knowledge, but my gain was more valuable than the loss.”

“You may write me down in history”

“Human beings love poetry. They don't even know it sometimes... whether they're the songs of Bono, or the songs of Justin Bieber... they're listening to poetry.”

“Modesty is a learned affectation. And as soon as life slams the modest person against the wall, that modesty drops.”

“If you were the President of the United States or the Queen of England - you couldn't have a person who would be more protective than my mother was for me. Which meant really that I could dare to do all sorts of things.”

“In the flush of love's light, we dare be brave. And suddenly we see that love costs all we are, and will ever be. Yet it is only love which sets us free.”

“That's the biggest gift I can give anybody: 'Wake up, be aware of who you are, what you're doing and what you can do to prevent yourself from becoming ill.'”

“Try to be a rainbow in someone's cloud.”

“Everybody born comes from the Creator trailing wisps of glory. We come from the Creator with creativity. I think that each one of us is born with creativity.”

“How wonderful it is to be an American. We have known the best of times and the worst of times.”

“Fighting for one's freedom, struggling towards being free, is like struggling to be a poet or a good Christian or a good Jew or a good Muslim or good Zen Buddhist. You work all day long and achieve some kind of level of success by nightfall, go to sleep and wake up the next morning with the job still to be done. So you start all over again.”

“Segregation shaped me; education liberated me.”

“I don't think there's such a thing as autobiographical fiction. If I say it happened, it happened, even if only in my mind.”

“I'm just like you - I want to be a good human being. I'm doing my best, and I'm working at it. And I'm trying to be a Christian. I'm always amazed when people walk up to me and say, 'I'm a Christian.' I always think, 'Already? You've already got it?' I'm working at it. And at my age, I'll still be working at it at 96.”

“In all my work, I try to say - 'You may be given a load of sour lemons, why not try to make a dozen lemon meringue pies?'”

“All of us knows, not what is expedient, not what is going to make us popular, not what the policy is, or the company policy - but in truth each of us knows what is the right thing to do. And that's how I am guided.”

“Some critics will write 'Maya Angelou is a natural writer' - which is right after being a natural heart surgeon.”

“I would be stupid not to be on my own side. But I'm a human being, too. And I'm on the side of human beings, rather than on the side of crocodiles.”

“I'm interested in women's health because I'm a woman. I'd be a darn fool not to be on my own side.”

“I know for sure that loves saves me and that it is here to save us all.”

“Nothing succeeds like success. Get a little success, and then just get a little more.”

“While the rest of the world has been improving technology, Ghana has been improving the quality of man's humanity to man.”

“Hold those things that tell your history and protect them. During slavery, who was able to read or write or keep anything? The ability to have somebody to tell your story to is so important. It says: 'I was here. I may be sold tomorrow. But you know I was here.'”

“I'm happy to be a writer - of prose, poetry, every kind of writing. Every person in the world who isn't a recluse, hermit or mute uses words. I know of no other art form that we always use.”

“I love the song 'I Hope You Dance' by Lee Ann Womack. I was going to write that song, but someone beat me to it.”

“To take a few nouns, and a few pronouns, and adverbs and adjectives, and put them together, ball them up, and throw them against the wall to make them bounce. That's what Norman Mailer did. That's what James Baldwin did, and Joan Didion did, and that's what I do - that's what I mean to do.”

“My greatest blessing has been the birth of my son. My next greatest blessing has been my ability to turn people into children of mine.”

“Make every effort to change things you do not like. If you cannot make a change, change the way you have been thinking. You might find a new solution.”

“I admire people who dare to take the language, English, and understand it and understand the melody.”

“I'm just like you - I want to be a good human being. I'm doing my best, and I'm working at it. And I'm trying to be a Christian. I'm always amazed when people walk up to me and say, 'I'm a Christian.' I always think, 'Already? You've already got it?' I'm working at it. And at my age, I'll still be working at it at 96.”

“I'm working at trying to be a Christian, and that's serious business. It's like trying to be a good Jew, a good Muslim, a good Buddhist, a good Shintoist, a good Zoroastrian, a good friend, a good lover, a good mother, a good buddy - it's serious business.”

“I will not sit in a room with black people when the N word is used. I know it was meant to belittle a person, so I will not sit there and have that poison put on me. Now a black person can say, 'Oh, you know, I can use this word because I'm black.'”

“My life has been one great big joke, a dance that's walked a song that's spoke, I laugh so hard I almost choke when I think about myself.”

“I'm grateful to intelligent people. That doesn't mean educated. That doesn't mean intellectual. I mean really intelligent. What black old people used to call 'mother wit' means intelligence that you had in your mother's womb. That's what you rely on. You know what's right to do.”

“If you want what you're saying heard, then take your time and say it so that the listener will actually hear it. You might save somebody's life. Your own, first.”

“I'm happy to be a writer - of prose, poetry, every kind of writing. Every person in the world who isn't a recluse, hermit or mute uses words. I know of no other art form that we always use.”

“I know some people might think it odd - unworthy even - for me to have written a cookbook, but I make no apologies. The U.S. poet laureate Billy Collins thought I had demeaned myself by writing poetry for Hallmark Cards, but I am the people's poet so I write for the people.”

“I work very hard, and I play very hard. I'm grateful for life. And I live it - I believe life loves the liver of it. I live it.”

“What is a fear of living? It's being preeminently afraid of dying. It is not doing what you came here to do, out of timidity and spinelessness. The antidote is to take full responsibility for yourself - for the time you take up and the space you occupy. If you don't know what you're here to do, then just do some good.”

“When I cook for my family on Christmas, I make feijoada, a South American dish of roasted and smoked meats like ham, pork, beef, lamb, and bacon - all served with black beans and rice. It's festive but different.”

“Children's talent to endure stems from their ignorance of alternatives.”

“It's one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself, to forgive. Forgive everybody.”

“I've read everything Thomas Wolfe ever wrote; my brother and I memorized whole chapters of 'You Can't Go Home Again' and 'Look Homeward, Angel.'”

“A woman's heart should be so hidden in God that a man has to seek Him just to find her.”

“My greatest blessing has been the birth of my son. My next greatest blessing has been my ability to turn people into children of mine.”

“I'm interested in women's health because I'm a woman. I'd be a darn fool not to be on my own side.”

“I never had that feeling that I had to carry the weight of somebody's ignorance around with me. And that was true for racists who wanted to use the 'n' word when talking about me or about my people, or the stupidity of people who really wanted to belittle other folks because they weren't pretty or they weren't rich or they weren't clever.”

“I've read everything Thomas Wolfe ever wrote; my brother and I memorized whole chapters of 'You Can't Go Home Again' and 'Look Homeward, Angel.'”

“Cooking certain dishes, like roast pork, reminds me of my mother.”

“I'm a serious aficionada of country music - Reba McEntire, Toby Keith, Montgomery Gentry. I've even written some songs. They haven't done anything of mine yet. But it's only a matter of time.”

“The first decade of the twentieth century was not a great time to be born black and poor and female in St. Louis, Missouri, but Vivian Baxter was born black and poor, to black and poor parents. Later she would grow up and be called beautiful. As a grown woman she would be known as the butter-colored lady with the blowback hair.”

“I write some country music. There's a song called 'I Hope You Dance.' Incredible. I was going to write that poem; somebody beat me to it.”

“Segregation shaped me; education liberated me.”

“I don't know how much longer I'll be around. I'll probably be writing when the Lord says, 'Maya, Maya Angelou, it's time.'”

“When Great Trees Fall”

“My mom was a terrible parent of young children. And thank God - I thank God every time I think of it - I was sent to my paternal grandmother. Ah, but my mother was a great parent of a young adult.”

“At one time, you could sit on the Rue de la Paix in Paris or at the Habima Theater in Tel Aviv or in Medina and you could see a person come in, black, white, it didn't matter. You said, 'That's an American' because there's a readiness to smile and to talk to people.”

“I think music is one of the hero/sheroes of the African-American existence.”

“Though I do manage to mumble around in about seven or eight languages, English remains the most beautiful of languages. It will do anything.”

“A cynical young person is almost the saddest sight to see, because it means that he or she has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing.”

“I was very blessed to have family and friends, but particularly family, who told me I was not only all right, I was just right, so I believe that my brain is a good one, and it's lasting me very well.”

“My mom was a terrible parent of young children. And thank God - I thank God every time I think of it - I was sent to my paternal grandmother. Ah, but my mother was a great parent of a young adult.”

“While I know myself as a creation of God, I am also obligated to realize and remember that everyone else and everything else are also God's creation.”

“Until blacks and whites see each other as brother and sister, we will not have parity. It's very clear.”

“I'm considered wise, and sometimes I see myself as knowing. Most of the time, I see myself as wanting to know. And I see myself as a very interested person. I've never been bored in my life.”

“We, unaccustomed to courage”

“Like a pianist runs her fingers over the keys, I'll search my mind for what to say. Now, the poem may want you to write it. And then sometimes you see a situation and think, 'I'd like to write about that.' Those are two different ways of being approached by a poem, or approaching a poem.”

“I've never had a dislike for men. I've been badly treated by some. But I've been loved greatly by some. I married a lot of them.”

“I want to write so well that a person is 30 or 40 pages in a book of mine... before she realizes she's reading.”

“Timidity makes a person modest. It makes him or her say, 'I'm not worthy of being written up in the record of deeds in heaven or on earth.' Timidity keeps people from their good. They are afraid to say, 'Yes, I deserve it.'”

“The love of the family, the love of one person can heal. It heals the scars left by a larger society. A massive, powerful society.”

“I want to thank you, Lord, for life and all that's in it.”

“I became the kind of parent my mother was to me.”

“Every December, I host a tree-trimming party. I serve chili with cornbread and lots of good wine. It's a wonderful party, and it shows how much adults like to play.”

“I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself.”

“I'm a religious woman. And I feel I have responsibility. I have no modesty at all. I'm even afraid of it - it's a learned affectation and it's just stuck on me like decals. Now I pray for humility because that comes from inside out.”

“Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him.”

“Segregation shaped me; education liberated me.”

“I find in my poetry and prose the rhythms and imagery of the best - I mean, when I'm at my best - of the good Southern black preachers. The lyricism of the spirituals and the directness of gospel songs and the mystery of blues are in my music or in my poetry and prose, or I missed everything.”

“Eating is so intimate. It's very sensual. When you invite someone to sit at your table and you want to cook for them, you're inviting a person into your life.”

“The language of all the interpretations, the translations, of the Judaic Bible and the Christian Bible, is musical, just wonderful. I read the Bible to myself; I'll take any translation, any edition, and read it aloud, just to hear the language, hear the rhythm, and remind myself how beautiful English is.”

“I like to speak on matters which matter to human beings, and almost everything matters to human beings.”

“I know that I've been guided by God. I am obedient.”

“Julian said he had read about a march to Washington, D.C., to be led by Martin Luther King, Jr....”

“I’ve learned that no matter what happens, or how bad it seems today, life does go on, and it will be better tomorrow. I’ve learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way he/she handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights. I’ve learned that regardless of your relationship with your parents, you’ll miss them when they’re gone from your life. I’ve learned that making a “living” is not the same thing as making a “life.” I’ve learned that life sometimes gives you a second chance. I’ve learned that you shouldn’t go through life with a catcher’s mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw something back. I’ve learned that whenever I decide something with an open heart, I usually make the right decision. I’ve learned that even when I have pains, I don’t have to be one. I’ve learned that every day you should reach out and touch someone. People love a warm hug, or just a friendly pat on the back. I’ve learned that I still have a lot to learn. I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

“”

“I promised myself that I would write as well as I can, tell the truth, not to tell everything I know, but to make sure that everything I tell is true, as I understand it. And to use the eloquence which my language affords me.”

“If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude.”

“Whenever something went wrong when I was young - if I had a pimple or if my hair broke - my mom would say, 'Sister mine, I'm going to make you some soup.' And I really thought the soup would make my pimple go away or my hair stronger.”

“I was a dancer for many years. I was a premier dancer with 'Porgy and Bess,' the opera. And I taught dance some, in different places.”

“Segregation shaped me; education liberated me.”

“I was born in St. Louis but lived there just for a few minutes in my life.”

“I speak to the black experience, but I am always talking about the human condition.”

“You may write me down in history with your bitter, twisted lines. You may trod me in the very dirt, but still, like dust, I'll rise.”

“I thank God I'm myself and for the life I'm given to live and for friends and lovers and beloveds, and I thank God for knowing that all those people have already paid for me.”

“Independence is a heady draught, and if you drink it in your youth, it can have the same effect on the brain as young wine does. It does not matter that its taste is not always appealing. It is addictive and with each drink you want more.”

“I've still not written as well as I want to. I want to write so that the reader in Des Moines, Iowa, in Kowloon, China, in Cape Town, South Africa, can say, 'You know, that's the truth. I wasn't there, and I wasn't a six-foot black girl, but that's the truth.'”

“Poetry puts starch in your backbone so you can stand, so you can compose your life.”

“Writing and cookery are just two different means of communication.”

“I find it very difficult to let a friend or beloved go into that country of no return. I answer the heroic question, "Death, where is thy sting?" with "It is here in my heart, and my mind, and my memories.”

“I think Clinton, after getting into office and into Washington, was shocked at being bludgeoned. So he spent time trying to be all things to all people - one way guaranteed not to be successful or respected in a lion's den. You can't just play around with all those big cats - you've got to take somebody on.”

“Whenever something went wrong when I was young - if I had a pimple or if my hair broke - my mom would say, 'Sister mine, I'm going to make you some soup.' And I really thought the soup would make my pimple go away or my hair stronger.”

“Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope.”

“In a long meter hymn, a singer - they call it 'lays out a line.' And then the whole church joins in in repeating that line. And they form a wall of harmony so tight, you can't wedge a pin between it.”

“I have great respect for the past. If you don't know where you've come from, you don't know where you're going. I have respect for the past, but I'm a person of the moment. I'm here, and I do my best to be completely centered at the place I'm at, then I go forward to the next place.”

“Ah, Momma. I had never looked at death before, peered into its yawning chasm for the face of a beloved. For days my mind staggered out of balance. I reeled on a precipice of knowledge that even if I were rich enough to travel all over the world, I would never find Momma. If I were as good as God’s angels and as pure as the Mother of Christ, I could never have Momma’s rough slow hands pat my cheek or braid my hair.”

“When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”

“One of the wonderful things about Oprah: She teaches you to keep on stepping.”

“Try to be a rainbow in someone's cloud.”

“We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated.”

“When I cook for my family on Christmas, I make feijoada, a South American dish of roasted and smoked meats like ham, pork, beef, lamb, and bacon - all served with black beans and rice. It's festive but different.”

“Segregation shaped me; education liberated me.”

“I have great respect for the past. If you don't know where you've come from, you don't know where you're going. I have respect for the past, but I'm a person of the moment. I'm here, and I do my best to be completely centered at the place I'm at, then I go forward to the next place.”

“I'm convinced of this: Good done anywhere is good done everywhere. For a change, start by speaking to people rather than walking by them like they're stones that don't matter. As long as you're breathing, it's never too late to do some good.”

“Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.”

“I think we all have empathy. We may not have enough courage to display it.”

“Find a beautiful piece of art. If you fall in love with Van Gogh or Matisse or John Oliver Killens, or if you fall love with the music of Coltrane, the music of Aretha Franklin, or the music of Chopin - find some beautiful art and admire it, and realize that that was created by human beings just like you, no more human, no less.”

“I've learned that you shouldn't go through life with a catcher's mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw something back.”

“We, the black people, the most displaced, the poorest, the most maligned and scourged, we had the glorious task of reclaiming the soul and saving the honor of the country. We, the most hated, must take hate into our hands and by the miracle of love, turn loathing into love. We, the most feared and apprehensive must take fear and by love, change it into hope. We, who die daily in large and small ways, must take the demon death and turn it into life.-Martin Luther King Jr.”

“You are the sum total of everything you've ever seen, heard, eaten, smelled, been told, forgot - it's all there. Everything influences each of us, and because of that I try to make sure that my experiences are positive.”

“Love is like a virus. It can happen to anybody at any time.”

“You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.”

“My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. That some people, unable to go to school, were more educated and more intelligent than college professors.”

“I learned a long time ago the wisest thing I can do is be on my own side, be an advocate for myself and others like me.”

“If you find it in your heart to care for somebody else, you will have succeeded.”

“Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with deeper meaning.”

“Courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you can't practice any other virtue consistently. You can practice any virtue erratically, but nothing consistently without courage.”

“Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future and renders the present inaccessible.”

“Segregation shaped me; education liberated me.”

“If we lose love and self respect for each other, this is how we finally die.”

“The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.”

“Won't it be wonderful when black history and native American history and Jewish history and all of U.S. history is taught from one book. Just U.S. history.”

“What is a fear of living? It's being preeminently afraid of dying. It is not doing what you came here to do, out of timidity and spinelessness. The antidote is to take full responsibility for yourself - for the time you take up and the space you occupy. If you don't know what you're here to do, then just do some good.”

“You can't forgive without loving. And I don't mean sentimentality. I don't mean mush. I mean having enough courage to stand up and say, 'I forgive. I'm finished with it.'”

“Whatever you want to do, if you want to be great at it, you have to love it and be able to make sacrifices for it.”

“My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.”

“My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. That some people, unable to go to school, were more educated and more intelligent than college professors.”

“If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform one million realities.”

“I keep a hotel room in my town, although I have a large house. And I go there at about 5:30 in the morning, and I start working. And I don't allow anybody to come in that room. I work on yellow pads and with ballpoint pens. I keep a Bible, a thesaurus, a dictionary, and a bottle of sherry. I stay there until midday.”

“[Martin Luther King, Jr.] said the South we might remember is gone. There was a new South. A more violent and ugly South, a country where our white brothers and sisters were terrified of change, inevitable change. They would rather scratch up the land with bloody fingers and take their most precious document, the Declaration of Independence, and throw it in the deepest ocean, bury it under the highest mountain, or burn it in the most flagrant blaze, than admit justice into a seat at the welcome table, and fair-play room in a vacant inn.”

“We have to confront ourselves. Do we like what we see in the mirror? And, according to our light, according to our understanding, according to our courage, we will have to say yea or nay - and rise!”

“It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength.”

“While I know myself as a creation of God, I am also obligated to realize and remember that everyone else and everything else are also God's creation.”

“A certain person wondered why”

“All great artists draw from the same resource: the human heart, which tells us that we are all more alike than we are unalike.”

“My great hope is to laugh as much as I cry; to get my work done and try to love somebody and have the courage to accept the love in return.”

“It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength.”

“Find a beautiful piece of art. If you fall in love with Van Gogh or Matisse or John Oliver Killens, or if you fall love with the music of Coltrane, the music of Aretha Franklin, or the music of Chopin - find some beautiful art and admire it, and realize that that was created by human beings just like you, no more human, no less.”

“Segregation shaped me; education liberated me.”

“The truth is, no one of us can be free until everybody is free.”

“If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude.”

“My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.”

“My great hope is to laugh as much as I cry; to get my work done and try to love somebody and have the courage to accept the love in return.”

“Love is like a virus. It can happen to anybody at any time.”

“I'm just someone who likes cooking and for whom sharing food is a form of expression.”

“Nothing will work unless you do.”

“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”

“Segregation shaped me; education liberated me.”

“Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean.”

“History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.”

“Writing and cookery are just two different means of communication.”

“What is a fear of living? It's being preeminently afraid of dying. It is not doing what you came here to do, out of timidity and spinelessness. The antidote is to take full responsibility for yourself - for the time you take up and the space you occupy. If you don't know what you're here to do, then just do some good.”

“All great achievements require time.”

“Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future and renders the present inaccessible.”

“Fighting for one's freedom, struggling towards being free, is like struggling to be a poet or a good Christian or a good Jew or a good Muslim or good Zen Buddhist. You work all day long and achieve some kind of level of success by nightfall, go to sleep and wake up the next morning with the job still to be done. So you start all over again.”

“A wise woman wishes to be no one's enemy; a wise woman refuses to be anyone's victim.”

“One isn't necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can't be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.”

“Try to be a rainbow in someone's cloud.”

“It's one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself, to forgive. Forgive everybody.”

“Each person deserves a day away in which no problems are confronted, no solutions searched for.”

“I have a son, who is my heart. A wonderful young man, daring and loving and strong and kind.”

“How important it is for us to recognize and celebrate our heroes and she-roes!”

“The thing to do, it seems to me, is to prepare yourself so you can be a rainbow in somebody else's cloud. Somebody who may not look like you. May not call God the same name you call God - if they call God at all. I may not dance your dances or speak your language. But be a blessing to somebody. That's what I think.”