-
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.
Maya Angelou -
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.
Maya Angelou
-
I speak a number of languages, but none are more beautiful to me than English.
Maya Angelou -
Cooking certain dishes, like roast pork, reminds me of my mother.
Maya Angelou -
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.
Maya Angelou -
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.
Maya Angelou -
Loving someone liberates the lover as well as the beloved. And that kind of love comes with age.
Maya Angelou -
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.
Maya Angelou
-
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.
Maya Angelou -
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.'
Maya Angelou -
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.'
Maya Angelou -
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.
Maya Angelou -
Achievement brings its own anticlimax.
Maya Angelou -
If you have only one smile in you give it to the people you love.
Maya Angelou
-
In so many ways, segregation shaped me, and education liberated me.
Maya Angelou -
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.
Maya Angelou -
At 50, I began to know who I was. It was like waking up to myself.
Maya Angelou -
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.
Maya Angelou -
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.
Maya Angelou -
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.
Maya Angelou
-
I was married a few times, and one of my husbands was jealous of me writing.
Maya Angelou -
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.'
Maya Angelou -
I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by the lapels.
Maya Angelou -
I am grateful to be a woman. I must have done something great in another life.
Maya Angelou