Oh, the holiness of being the injured party.

If I'm going to a new country, I try to learn something about the language and the culture, so I don't just go bumbling over things.

Christians already? It seems to me that it takes a lifetime of work.

Of course, there are those critics - New York critics as a rule - who say, 'Well, Maya Angelou has a new book out and of course it's good but then she's a natural writer.' Those are the ones I want to grab by the throat and wrestle to the floor because it takes me forever to get it to sing. I work at the language.

Even here in America, we felt the cool, refreshing breeze of freedom when Nelson Mandela took the seat of Presidency in his country where formerly he was not even allowed to vote. We were enlarged by tears of pride as we saw Nelson Mandela's former prison guards invited, courteously, by him to watch from the front rows his inauguration.

I have respect for the past, but I'm a person of the moment.

I do hope that young men and women will start to think for themselves and start to take responsibility for their own thoughts.