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Maya Angelou

b: Saint Louis, Missouri, Apr 4, 1928

American. Actor. Author. Wrote autobiographical best-sellers I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, 1970 All God's Children Need Travelling Shoes, 1986.

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A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.

A bizarre sensation pervades a relationship of pretense. No truth seems true. A simple morning's greeting and response appear loaded with innuendo and fraught with implications. Each nicety becomes more sterile and each withdrawal more permanent.

Achievement brings its own anticlimax.

Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him.

As far as I knew white women were never lonely, except in books. White men adored them, Black men desired them and Black women worked for them.

Ask for what you want and be prepared to get it.

At fifteen life had taught me undeniably that surrender, in its place, was as honorable as resistance, especially if one had no choice.

Being a woman is hard work.

Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns all clean.

Children's talent to endure stems from their ignorance of alternatives.

Effective action is always unjust.

For Africa to me... is more than a glamorous fact. It is a historical truth. No man can know where he is going unless he knows exactly where he has been and exactly how he arrived at his present place.

History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.

How important it is for us to recognize and celebrate our heroes and she-roes!

Human beings are more alike than unalike, and what is true anywhere is true everywhere, yet I encourage travel to as many destinations as possible for the sake of education as well as pleasure.

I believe we are still so innocent. The species are still so innocent that a person who is apt to be murdered believes that the murderer, just before he puts the final wrench on his throat, will have enough compassion to give him one sweet cup of water.

I have found that among its other benefits, giving liberates the soul of the giver.

I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by the lapels. Life's a bitch. You've got to go out and kick ass.

I speak to the black experience, but I am always talking about the human condition – about what we can endure, dream, fail at, and still survive.

I'm a spring leaf trembling in anticipation.

If growing up is painful for the Southern Black girl, being aware of her displacement is the rust on the razor that threatens the throat.

If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform one million realities.

If you don't like something change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude. Don't complain.

If you find it in your heart to care for somebody else, you will have succeeded.

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.

It is this belief in a power larger than myself and other than myself which allows me to venture into the unknown and even the unknowable.

Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told: "I'm with you kid. Let's go."

Living a life is like constructing a building: if you start wrong, you'll end wrong.

Love is that condition in the human spirit so profound that it allows me to survive, and better than that, to thrive with passion, compassion, and style.

Most plain girls are virtuous because of the scarcity of opportunity to be otherwise. {from I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings}

Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.

My life has been one great big joke, a dance that's walked a song that's spoke, I laugh so hard I almost choke when I think about myself.

Nature 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."

Now, after years of observation and enough courage to admit what I have observed, I try to plant peace if I do not want discord; to plant loyalty and honesty if I want to avoid betrayal and lies.

Of all the needs (there are none imaginary) a lonely child has, the one that must be satisfied, if there is going to be hope and a hope of wholeness, is the unshaken need for an unshakable God.

One isn't necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can't be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.

Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future and renders the present inaccessible.

Self-pity in its early stages is as snug as a feather mattress. Only when it hardens does it become uncomfortable.

She began the first of what we later called 'my lessons in living.' She said that I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. {I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings (1970)}

Some critics will write "Maya angelou is a natural writer" – which is right after being a natural heart surgeon.

Talent is like electricity. We don't understand electricity. We use it. You can plug into it and light up a lamp, keep a heart pump going, light a cathedral, or you can electrocute a person with it.

The honorary duty of a human being is to love.

The main thing in one's own private world is to try to laugh as much as you cry.

The most called-upon prerequisite of a friend is an accessible ear.

The need for change bulldozed a road down the center of my mind.

The plague of racism is insidious, entering into our minds as smoothly and quietly and invisibly as floating airborne microbes enter into our bodies to find lifelong purchase in our bloodstreams.

The quality of strength lined with tenderness is an unbeatable combination, as are intelligence and necessity when unblunted by formal education.

There is a very fine line between loving life and being greedy for it.

There is nothing so pitiful as a young cynic because he has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing.

There's a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure the truth.

We all should know that diversity makes for a rich tapestry, and we must understand that all the threads of the tapestry are equal in value no matter what their color.

We allow our ignorance to prevail upon us and make us think we can survive alone, alone in patches, alone in groups, alone in races, even alone in genders.

We really are 15 countries, and it's remarkable that each of us thinks we represent the real america. The Midwesterner in Kansas, the black american in Durham – both are certain they are the real american.

While I know myself as a creation of God, I am also obligated to realize and remember that everyone else and everything else are also God's creation.

Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with shades of deeper meaning.

You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it.