Quotes from Maya Angelou

She's very intelligent and she often said she didn't fear anyone enough to lie.

Couples rarely know how much their togetherness shuts others out, and even if they did, there would be nothing they could do, save make everyone painfully self-conscious.

Death of a beloved flattens and dulls everything. Connections do not adhere so closely, and important events lose some of their glow.

On late evenings when quiet inhabits my garden when grass sleeps and streets are only paths for silent mist I seem to remember Smiling.

You are very kind and very intelligent and those elements are not always found together. Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt, Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune, and my mother - yes, you belong in that category. Here, give me a kiss.

First we became friendly, then we became sister friends. When she finally told me I was her daughter, I knew I had found home. Sitting

There is a much-loved region in the American fantasy where pale white women float eternally under black magnolia trees, and white men with soft hands brush wisps of wisteria from the creamy shoulders of their lady loves. Harmonious black music drifts like perfume through this precious air, and nothing of a threatening nature intrudes. The South I returned to, however, was flesh-real and swollen-belly poor.

If you don't protect yourself, you look like a fool asking somebody else to protect you.

Despite the sarcastic remarks of Northerners, who don't know the region (read Easterners, Westerners, North Easterners, North Westerners, Midwesterners), the South of the United States can be so impellingly beautiful that sophisticated creature comforts diminish in importance.

Stormy or sunny days, glorious or lonely nights, I maintain an attitude of gratitude. If i insist on being pessimistic, there is always tomorrow. Today I am blessed.

All my ways of being are musical and mysterious. Yet I embrace you openly. Ripe with expectancy.

You can't use up creativity. The more you use the more you have.

It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength. We all should know that diversity makes for a rich tapestry, and we must understand that all the threads of the tapestry are equal in value no matter their color; equal in importance no matter their texture.

The wise woman thinks twice and speaks once or, better yet, does not speak at all.

I've had rainbows in my clouds.

You may encounter many defeats. But you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats so you can know who you are, what you can rise from and how you can still come out of it.

Without willing it, I had gone from being ignorant of being ignorant to being aware of being aware.

I went further than forgiving the clerk, I accepted her as a fellow victim of the same puppeteer.

I am a big bird winging over high mountains, down into serene valleys. I am ripples of waves on silver seas. I'm a spring leaf trembling in anticipation of full growth.

They were assured that they were going to be the only inhabitants of that milk and honey...

The act of rape on an eight-year-old body is a matter of the needle giving because the camel can't. The child gives, because the body can, and the mind of the violator cannot.

Sometimes people put people on pedestals so they can see them more clearly and knock them off more easily.

Sugar cane reach up to God And every baby crying Shame the blanket of my night And all my days are dying

The man who is a bigot, is the worst thing God has got, except his match, his woman, who really is Ms. Begot.