Maya Angelou Quotes
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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.
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I went to sleep last night and I arose with the dawn, I know that there are others who're still sleeping on, They've gone away, You've let me stay, I want to thank You.
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Yes. When I’m writing, I am trying to find out who I am, who we are, what we’re capable of, how we feel, how we lose and stand up, and go on from darkness into darkness.
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If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform one million realities.
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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.'
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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.
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It's very important to know the neighbor next door and the people down the street and the people in another race.
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Petulant priests, greedy centurions, and one million incensed gestures stand between your love and me.
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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.'
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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.
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I am capable of what every other human is capable of. This is one of the great lessons of war and life.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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I'm not a writer who teaches. I'm a teacher who writes.
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I wasn't a pretty girl. I was six feet tall at 15, you know.
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I did work in a strip club, but I didn't strip. I danced, and I became very popular.
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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.
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How important it is for us to recognize and celebrate our heroes and she-roes!
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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.
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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.