Like a pianist runs her fingers over the keys, I'll search my mind for what to say. Now, the poem may want you to write it. And then sometimes you see a situation and think, 'I'd like to write about that.' Those are two different ways of being approached by a poem, or approaching a poem.


Maya Angelou

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Life loves the liver of it.
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Modesty is a learned affectation. And as soon as life slams the modest person against the wall, that...
MAYA ANGELOU
As far as I knew white women were never lonely, except in books. White men adored them, Black men de...
MAYA ANGELOU
If you will have a person enslaved, the first thing you must do is convince yourself that the person...
MAYA ANGELOU
The fact that the adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amaze...
MAYA ANGELOU
To take a few nouns, and a few pronouns, and adverbs and adjectives, and put them together, ball the...
MAYA ANGELOU
The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned...
MAYA ANGELOU
We are braver and wiser because they existed, those strong women and strong men... We are who we are...
MAYA ANGELOU
I thank God I'm myself and for the life I'm given to live and for friends and lovers and bel...
MAYA ANGELOU
If you have only one smile in you give it to the people you love.
MAYA ANGELOU
It is impossible to struggle for civil rights, equal rights for blacks, without including whites. Be...
MAYA ANGELOU
The language of all the interpretations, the translations, of the Judaic Bible and the Christian Bib...
MAYA ANGELOU
I read the Bible to myself; I'll take any translation, any edition, and read it aloud, just to h...
MAYA ANGELOU
I think Clinton, after getting into office and into Washington, was shocked at being bludgeoned. So ...
MAYA ANGELOU
Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.
MAYA ANGELOU
All great artists draw from the same resource: the human heart, which tells us that we are all more ...
MAYA ANGELOU
We can learn to see each other and see ourselves in each other and recognize that human beings are m...
MAYA ANGELOU
I'm grateful to intelligent people. That doesn't mean educated. That doesn't mean intell...
MAYA ANGELOU
You may write me down in history with your bitter, twisted lines. You may trod me in the very dirt, ...
MAYA ANGELOU
I love the melodies in the Old Testament, how preachers highlight them when they read from the Scrip...
MAYA ANGELOU
When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.
MAYA ANGELOU
I know that when I pray, something wonderful happens. Not just to the person or persons for whom I&#...
MAYA ANGELOU
You are the sum total of everything you've ever seen, heard, eaten, smelled, been told, forgot -...
MAYA ANGELOU
I learned a long time ago the wisest thing I can do is be on my own side, be an advocate for myself ...
MAYA ANGELOU
If we lose love and self respect for each other, this is how we finally die.
MAYA ANGELOU
It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is...
MAYA ANGELOU
If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude.
MAYA ANGELOU
All great achievements require time.
MAYA ANGELOU
Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean.
MAYA ANGELOU
You can't forgive without loving. And I don't mean sentimentality. I don't mean mush. I ...
MAYA ANGELOU
I think we all have empathy. We may not have enough courage to display it.
MAYA ANGELOU
Most people don't grow up. It's too damn difficult. What happens is most people get older. T...
MAYA ANGELOU
There's something which impels us to show our inner souls. The more courageous we are, the more ...
MAYA ANGELOU
I have a son, who is my heart. A wonderful young man, daring and loving and strong and kind.
MAYA ANGELOU
I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people ...
MAYA ANGELOU
It's one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself, to forgive. Forgive everybody.
MAYA ANGELOU
We write for the same reason that we walk, talk, climb mountains or swim the oceans - because we can...
MAYA ANGELOU
I am grateful to be a woman. I must have done something great in another life.
MAYA ANGELOU
I work very hard, and I play very hard. I'm grateful for life. And I live it - I believe life lo...
MAYA ANGELOU
I'm just someone who likes cooking and for whom sharing food is a form of expression.
MAYA ANGELOU
I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself.
MAYA ANGELOU
The thing to do, it seems to me, is to prepare yourself so you can be a rainbow in somebody else'...
MAYA ANGELOU
Information helps you to see that you're not alone. That there's somebody in Mississippi and...
MAYA ANGELOU
Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future and renders the present inaccessi...
MAYA ANGELOU
One isn't necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we can...
MAYA ANGELOU
If we don't plant the right things, we will reap the wrong things. It goes without saying. And y...
MAYA ANGELOU
History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived...
MAYA ANGELOU
I'm convinced of this: Good done anywhere is good done everywhere. For a change, start by speaki...
MAYA ANGELOU
What humility does for one is it reminds us that there are people before me. I have already been pai...
MAYA ANGELOU
Cooking certain dishes, like roast pork, reminds me of my mother.
MAYA ANGELOU