Love is that condition in the human spirit so profound that it empowers us to develop courage; to trust that courage and build bridges with it; to trust those bridges and cross over them so we can attempt to reach each other.

Without courage you can't practice any other virtue consistently.

I married a man once and we had been married over a year before I found he preferred potatoes. I said, "I didn't know you loved potatoes." And he said that until he was about 13, he thought rice was potato seeds.

Some critics will write 'Maya Angelou is a natural writer' - which is right after being a natural heart surgeon.

At one time, you could sit on the Rue de la Paix in Paris or at the Habima Theater in Tel Aviv or in Medina and you could see a person come in, black, white, it didn't matter. You said, 'That's an American' because there's a readiness to smile and to talk to people.

To be human is to be challenged to be more divine. Not even to try to meet such a challenge is the biggest defeat imaginable.

I want all my senses engaged. Let me absorb the world's variety and uniqueness.