Quotes from Maya Angelou

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 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 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.

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

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

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.

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

Writing and cookery are just two different means of communication.

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

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.

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.

I've learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way (s)he handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights.

Today, the first & last of every Tree/ Speaks to humankind. Come to me, here beside the River.

I don't trust any revolution where love is not allowed.

Don't trust people who don't laugh. I don't.

You can never go home again, but the truth is you can never leave home, so it's all right.

Love liberates. It doesn't just hold - that's ego. Love liberates. It doesn't bind.

Life loves the person who dares to live it.

Would you deny your son or your daughter the ecstasy of finding someone to love?

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

Love recognizes no barriers.

I had to trust life and believe that life loved the person who dared to live it.

Everybody in the world wants the same thing...to be needed...a job that he/she can do well...to love somebody...Everybody...There's no mystery.

Laugh as often as possible. You must. Because the world will offer you every reason to weep. So as often as possible, you laugh. That, I think, is part of the Great Love.