Quotes from Maya Angelou

Turning off or tuning out people was my highly developed art. The custom of letting obedient children be seen but not heard was so agreeable to me that I went one step further: Obedient children should not see or hear if they chose not to do so.

When he finished, more triumphant stories rainbowed around the room riding the shoulders of laughter. By all accounts these storytellers, born Black and male before the turn of the twentieth century, should have been ground into useless dust. Instead they used their intelligence to pry open the door of rejection and not only became wealthy but got some revenge in the bargain. It wasn't possible for me to regard them as criminals or be anything but proud of their achievements.

A smile struggled free and limped across his lips.

I felt as if I were blowing my breath against a tornado.

Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the spaces between the notes and curl my back to loneliness. In my rented room (cooking privileges down the hall), I would play a record, then put my arms around the shoulder of the song. As we danced, glued together, I would nuzzle into its neck, kissing the skin, and rubbing its cheek with my own.

Be careful when a naked person gives you a shirt.

We need the courage to create ourselves daily, to be bodacious enough to create ourselves daily — as Christians, as Jews, as Muslims, as thinking, caring, laughing, loving human beings. I think that the courage to confront evil and turn it by dint of will into something applicable to the development of our evolution, individually and collectively, is exciting, honorable.

Soft grey ghosts crawl up my sleeve to peer into my eyes while I within deny their threats and answer them with lies. Mushlike memories perform a ritual on my lips I lie in stolid hopelessness and they lay my soul in strips.

My wish for you is that you continue. Continue to be who and how you are, to astonish a mean world with your acts of kindness.

Without the presence and energy of art in our lives, we are capable of engaging in heartless activities without remorse and cruelties with clear consciences.

We cackled like two old crones, remembering a secret past. The laughter was sour and not really directed at white women. It was a traditional ruse that was used to shield the Black vulnerability; we laughed to keep from crying.

If we accept being talked to any kind of a way, then we are telling ourselves we are not quite worth the best. And if we have the effrontery to talk to anybody with less than courtesy, we tell ourselves and the world we are not very intelligent.

We laughed together. Our friendship was possible because Ivonne was wise without glitter, while I, too often, glittered without wisdom.

But the true nature of the human heart is as whimsical as spring weather. All signals may aim toward a fall of rain when suddenly the skies will clear.

My tears were not for Bailey or Mother or even myself but for the helplessness of mortals who live on the sufferance of Life.

But, don't let anybody make you do something you don't think is right. Your mother already raised you. Stay steady. And if that makes somebody mad, they can scratch their mad place and get glad.

Each single gain feeds into the gains of the body collective.

They were using her feinting body to erase their present and catapult themselves into a fantasy where sex-starved women lay submissive and split open like red, ripe watermelons.

Alone, seated in a strange house filled with strangers, I felt as if I were in dangerous waters, swimming badly and out of my depth. I was plankton in an ocean of whales.

Usually when one throw's oneself at another's feet, one should be prepared to do a fast roll to avoid being stepped on.

For centuries we had probed their faces, the angles of their bodies, the sounds of their voices and even their odors. Often our survival had depended upon the accurate reading of a white man's chuckle or the disdainful wave of a white woman's hand. Whites, on the other hand, always knew that no serious penalty threatened them if they misunderstood blacks. Whites were safely isolated from our concerns.

It could be fatal, but at least all anxiety would cease. Because of that, I often rushed towards holocausts with an abandon that caused observers to think of me as courageous. The truth was, I simply wanted an end to uncertainty.

Yanko allowed me to enter a world strange and fanciful. Although I had to cope daily with real and mundane matters, I found that some of the magic of his world stayed around my shoulders.

I left Sonny and walked around, rustling myself in the sounds and feasting my eyes on the tasty colors of my people.