Quotes from Maya Angelou

He never went to church, which Bailey and I thought also proved he was a very courageous person. How great it would be to grow up like that, to be able to stare religion down..

My tears were not for Bailey or Mother or even myself but for the helplessness of mortals who live on the sufferance of Life. In order to avoid this bitter end, we would all have to be born again, and born with the knowledge of alternatives. Even then?

They don't really hate us. They don't know us. How can they hate us? They mostly scared.

I love you, Mom. Maybe now you'll have a chance to grow up.

If you want to know how important you are to the world, stick your finger in a pond and pull it out. Will the hole remain?

From that encounter on, whether my days are stormy or sunny and if my nights are glorious or lonely, I maintain an attitude of gratitude. If pessimism insists on occupying my thoughts, I remember there is always tomorrow. Today I am blessed.

Whether we were in the mines of South Africa, or the liberal New York theater, nothing changed. Whites wanted everything. They thought they deserved everything. That they wanted to possess all the materials of the earth was in itself disturbing, but that they also wanted to control the souls and the pride of people was inexplicable.

Continue To dare to love deeply And risk everything For the good thing Continue

Death, where is thy string? It is here in my heart, and my mind, and my memories.

He was a simple man who had no inferiority complex about his lack of education and, even more amazing, no superiority complex since he had succeeded despite that lack. He would say often, I been to school three years in my life. In Slaten, Texas, times was hard, and I had to help my daddy on the farm. No recriminations lay hidden under the plain statement, nor was there boasting when he said, If I'm living a little better now, it's because I treats everybody right.

And my seven-year-old world humpty-dumptied, never to be put back together again.

Did he insult you? I mean us, the race? Not directly. Like most white racists, he was paternalistic. I would have preferred he slap me than that he talk down upon me. Then I could retaliate in kind.

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.

Though I prided myself on tender sensitivity, I have never known when a great love affair was beginning. Some barricade lies midway my mind, and I'm usually on my back scrutinising a ceiling before it is borne in on me that this is the man I fantasised in my late-night fingering.

He was a simple man who had no inferiority complex about his lack of education and, even more amazing, no superiority complex because he had succeeded despite that lack. He would say often, I been to school three years in my life. In Slaten, Texas, times was hard, and I had to help my daddy on the farm. No recriminations lay hidden under the plain statement, nor was there boasting when he said, If I'm living a little better now, it's because I treats everybody right.

I have written eleven books, but each time I think, 'uh oh, they're going to find out now. I've run a game on everybody, and they're going to find me out.

She's one of our fans. She comes to the theater and allows us to curse and berate her, and that's her contribution to our struggle." Roscoe

Self-pity in its early stage is as snug as a feather mattress. Only when it hardens does it become uncomfortable.

Get a little success, and then just get a little more.

His words never rushed but were selected, chewed over, released into the air as if the best choice possible had been made.

My mother's gifts of courage to me were both large and small. The latter are woven so subtly into the fabric of my psyche that I can hardly distinguish where she stops and I begin.

There is a time in every man's life when he must push off from the wharf of safety into the sea of chance.

Sounds came to me dully, as if people were speaking through their handkerchiefs or with their hands over their mouths. Colors weren't true either, but rather a vague assortment of shaded pastels that indicated not so much color as faded familiarities. People's names escaped me and I began to worry over my sanity.

The unsaid words pushed roughly against the thoughts that we had no craft to verbalize, and crowded the room to uneasiness. 34 Later, my room had all the cheeriness of a dungeon and the appeal of a tomb.