Maya Angelou Quotes
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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 believe that each of us comes from the Creator trailing wisps of glory.
-
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.
-
When I write, I tend to twist my hair. Something for my small mind to do, I guess.
-
How important it is for us to recognize and celebrate our heroes and she-roes!
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
In all the world there is no heart for me like yours. In all the world there is no love for you like mine.
-
I'm just someone who likes cooking and for whom sharing food is a form of expression.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform one million realities.
-
It's very important to know the neighbor next door and the people down the street and the people in another race.
-
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 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 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 became the kind of parent my mother was to me.