My greatest blessing has been the birth of my son. My next greatest blessing has been my ability to turn people into children of mine.
Maya AngelouI'm really saddened by the attempts to separate and polarize. This is a time when we have hungry people, people out of work, and people out of spirit. This is a time where we need to uplift, not to separate.
Maya AngelouI never have written every day. When I'm writing a book, I write Monday through Friday. I always try to take Saturday and pretend to have some sanity.
Maya AngelouMy 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.
Maya AngelouI'm grateful to intelligent people. That doesn't mean educated. That doesn't mean intellectual. I mean really intelligent. What black old people used to call 'mother wit' means intelligence that you had in your mother's womb. That's what you rely on. You know what's right to do.
Maya AngelouWhen I forgive other people, I let them go, I free them from my ignorance. And as soon as I do, I feel lighter, brighter and better.
Maya Angelou"Baby, you know?" my mother once said to me. "I think you're the greatest woman I've ever met - and I'm not including my mother or Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt in that." She said, "You are very intelligent and you're very kind, and those two qualities do not often go together." Then she went across the street and got in her car, and I went the other way down to the streetcar. I thought, "Suppose she's right. She's intelligent - and she's too mean to lie." You see, a parent has the chance - and maybe the responsibility - to liberate her child. And my mom had liberated me when I was 17.
Maya AngelouI know that you that you may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. If you accept that you have been defeated, you give power to the force that is trying to defeat you.
Maya AngelouI couldn't tell fact from fiction, Or if the dream was true My only sure prediction In this world was you. I'd touch your features inchly. Beard love and dared the cost, The sented spiel reeled me unreal And I found my senses lost.
Maya AngelouI've tried to be totally present, so that when I'm finished with a piece of work, I'm finished. ... The work, once completed, does not need me. The work I'm working on needs my total concentration. The one that's finished doesn't belong to me anymore. It belongs to itself.
Maya AngelouIt's wonderful that whenever Patsy Cline's name is mentioned, people's voices fall and they become right sentimental. And, rightly so.
Maya AngelouI do like to have guns around. I don't like to carry them. But I like - if somebody is going to come into my house and I have not put out the welcome mat, I want to stop them.
Maya AngelouI have heard it said that winter, too, will pass, that spring is a sign that summer is due at last. See, all we have to do is hang on.
Maya AngelouThe ship of my life may or may not be sailing on calm and amiable seas. The challenging days of my existence may or may not be bright and promising. Stormy or sunny days, glorious or lonely nights, I maintain an attitude of gratitude. If I insist on being pessimistic, there is always tomorrow. Today I am blessed.
Maya AngelouDr. [Martin Luther] King was a human being. He had a sense of humor which was wonderful.
Maya AngelouWhen I say 'I am a Christian', I'm not shouting 'I'm saved'. I'm whispering 'I get lost'. That is why I chose this way.
Maya AngelouI have forgiven myself; I'll make a change. Once that forgiveness has taken place you can console yourself with the knowledge that a diamond is the result of extreme pressure. Less pressure is crystal, less than that is coal, less than that is fossilized leaves or plain dirt. Pressure can change you into something quite precious, quite wonderful, quote beautiful and extremely hard.
Maya AngelouMy great blessing is my son, but I have daughters. I have white ones and Black ones and fat ones and thin ones and pretty ones and plain. I have gay ones and straight. I have daughters. I have Asian ones, I have Jewish ones, I have Muslim ones.
Maya AngelouLove 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.
Maya AngelouThe writer has to take the most used, most familiar objects - nouns, pronouns, verbs, adverbs - ball them together and make them bounce, turn them a certain way and make people get into a romantic mood; and another way, into a bellicose mood. I'm most happy to be a writer.
Maya AngelouNature has no mercy at all. Nature says, "I'm going to snow. If you have on a bikini and no snowshoes, that's tough. I am going to snow anyway."
Maya AngelouYou forgive yourself for every failure because you are trying to do the right thing. God knows that and you know it. Nobody else may know it.
Maya AngelouWe can be better, we can be wiser, we can be more kind. Yes we have to change. We have to grow up and stop acting like 10 years old. Yes there is much to do, much to see, much to go into.
Maya AngelouAll riddles are blues, / And all blues are sad, / And I'm only mentioning / Some blues I've had.
Maya AngelouAll of us knows, not what is expedient, not what is going to make us popular, not what the policy is, or the company policy - but in truth each of us knows what is the right thing to do. And that's how I am guided.
Maya AngelouJust like moons and suns, With certainty of tides, Just like hopes springing high, Still I'll rise.
Maya AngelouYou may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, the encountering may be the very experience which creates the vitality and the power to endure.
Maya AngelouStrong women- precious jewels all- their humanness is evident in their accessibility. We are able to enter into the spirit of these women and rejoice in their warmth and courage.
Maya AngelouBy no amount of agile exercising of a wistful imagination could my mother have been called lenient. Generous she was; indulgent never. Kind, yes, permissive, never. In her world, people she accepted paddled their own canoes, pulled their own weight, put their own shoulders to their own plows and pushed like hell.
Maya AngelouI am a woman phenomenally, phenomenal woman that is your grandmother, that is your mother, that is your sister, that is you and that is me.
Maya AngelouMost people don't grow up. Most people age. They find parking spaces, honor their credit cards, get married, have children, and call that maturity. What that is, is aging.
Maya AngelouThere's racism and sexism and ageism and all sorts of idiocies. But bad news is not news. We've had bad news as a species for a long time. We've had slavery and human sacrifice and the holocaust and brutalities of such measure.
Maya AngelouEvery person needs to take one day away. A day in which one consciously separates the past from the future. Jobs, family, employers, and friends can exist one day without any one of us, and if our egos permit us to confess, they could exist eternally in our absence. Each person deserves a day away in which no problems are confronted, no solutions searched for. Each of us needs to withdraw from the cares which will not withdraw from us.
Maya AngelouSome critics will write 'Maya Angelou is a natural writer' - which is right after being a natural heart surgeon.
Maya AngelouThose who have something to say accept the fact that that's lonely. One already knows that there will be adversaries.
Maya Angelou