Quotes from Maya Angelou

The knowledge that we had the power to upset that goddess made us look at each other conspiratorially and smile. It also made her human.

Because the white world demonstrated in every possible way that he, a black boy, had to live within the murdering boundaries of racial restrictions, I had raised him to believe that he had a say in the living of his life, and that barring accidents, he should have a say in the dying of his death.

Your skin like dawn Mine like dusk. One paints the beginning of a certain end. The other, the end of a sure beginning. from Passing Time

The unsaid words pushed roughly against the thoughts that we had no craft to verbalize, and crowded the room to uneasiness.

You've been a hard worker—white, black, Asian, and Latino women ship out of the San Francisco port because of you. You have been a shipfitter, a nurse, a real estate broker, and a barber. Many men and—if my memory serves me right—a few women risked their lives to love you. You were a terrible mother of small children, but there has never been anyone greater than you as a mother of a young adult.

You can call for the cook, call for the baker, you may as well call for the undertaker.

The incident was a recurring dream, concocted years before by stupid whites and it eternally came back to haunt us all. The secretary and I were like Hamlet and Laertes in the final scene, where, because of harm done by one ancestor to another, we were bound to duel to the death. Also because the play must end somewhere. I went further than forgiving the clerk, I accepted her as a fellow victim of the same puppeteer.

You find the path by walking it.

they had not come home, but had left one familiar place of painful memory for another strange place with none. The

Of course I could drive. Idiots and lunatics drove cars, why not the brilliant Marguerite Johnson?

You cannot be consistently fair or just or kind or generous or loving without courage. It is time for you to decide privately, secretly, in your own place inside yourselves, what you will do. You have to come to peace with a peaceful heart.

Their remarks and responses were like a Ping-Pong game with each volley clearing the net and flying back to the opposition. The sense of what they were saying became lost, and only the exercise remained. The exchange was conducted with the certainty of a measured hoedown and had the jerkiness of Monday's wash snapping in the wind—now cracking east, then west, with only the intent to whip the dampness out of the cloth.

He so routinely disparaged other people's importance that he didn't notice he was degrading me.

Graduation, the hush-hush magic time of frills and gifts and congratulations and diplomas, was finished for me before my name was called. The accomplishment was nothing. The meticulous maps, drawn in three colors of ink, learning and spelling decasyllabic words, memorizing the whole of The Rape of Lucrece—it was for nothing. Donleavy had exposed us.

Whether our new start was going to end in success or failure didn't cross my mind. What I did know, and know consciously, was that it was already exciting.

Sister, in this country a Negro is always about to get killed, so that ain't nothing. But you tell your husband that a black man was ready to lay down his life for you. That's all.

The allegiances I owed at this time in my life would have made very strange bedfellows: Momma with her solemn determination, Mrs. Flowers and her books, Bailey with his love, my mother and her gaiety, Miss Kirwin and her information, my evening classes of drama and dance.

When you learn, teach. When you get, give" "But still, like dust, I'll rise" "I'm not on top but I call it swell if I'm able to work and get paid right..." "I'm a woman Phenomenally. Phenomenal woman, That's me.

Each of us has lived through some devastation, some loneliness, some weather superstorm or spiritual superstorm. When we look at each other we must say, I understand. I understand how you feel because I have been there myself. We must support each other because each of us is more alike than we are unalike.

WHEN YOU LEARN, TEACH; WHEN YOU GET, GIVE

There have been people in my life who meant me well, taught me valuable lessons, and others who have meant me ill and have given me ample notification that my world is not meant to be all peaches and cream.

Don't run yourself down, darling, there are plenty of people in the world who will do that for you.

Bailey] had told me once that all knowledge was spendable currency, depending on the market.

It is my neck and my life. I will live it whole or not at all." He