Hope does not take away your problems. It can lift you above them.

We need to not be in denial about what we've done, what we've come through. It will help us if we all do that.

I would be stupid not to be on my own side. But I'm a human being, too. And I'm on the side of human beings, rather than on the side of crocodiles.

If you have only one smile in you, give it to the people you love. Don't be surly at home, then go out in the street and start grinning 'Good morning' at total strangers.

I like to know what's happening.

Mother's life flowed radiant. Flourescent-tipped waves on incoming tides.

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.