1928-, African-American poet, Writer, Performer
A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.
Maya Angelou – [Action]
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.
Maya Angelou – [Love Ended]
All of childhood's unanswered questions must finally be passed back to the town and answered there. Heroes and bogey men, values and dislikes, are first encountered and labeled in that early environment. In later years they change faces, places and maybe races, tactics, intensities and goals, but beneath those penetrable masks they wear forever the stocking-capped faces of childhood.
Maya Angelou – [Conditioning]
At fifteen life had taught me undeniably that surrender, in its place, was as honorable as resistance, especially if one had no choice.
Maya Angelou – [Resignation]
Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean.
Maya Angelou – [Anger]
Children's talent to endure stems from their ignorance of alternatives.
Maya Angelou – [Children]
Each of us has the right and the responsibility to asses the road which lie ahead and those over which we have traveled, and if the feature road looms ominous or unpromising, and the road back uninviting-inviting, then we need to gather our resolve and carrying only the necessary baggage, step off that road into another direction. If the new choice is also unpalatable, without embarrassment, we must be ready to change that one as well.
Maya Angelou – [Responsibility]
Education helps one case cease being intimidated by strange situations.
Maya Angelou – [Education]
I believe that every person is born with talent.
Maya Angelou – [Talent]
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.
Maya Angelou – [Credulity]
I find it interesting that the meanest life, the poorest existence, is attributed to God's will, but as human beings become more affluent, as their living standard and style begin to ascend the material scale, God descends the scale of responsibility at a commensurate speed.
Maya Angelou – [God]
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.
Maya Angelou – [Aggression]
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.
Maya Angelou – [Smile]
Life loves the liver of it.
Maya Angelou – [Life and Living]
Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told: ''I'm with you kid. Let's go.''
Maya Angelou – [Life and Living]
My great hope is to laugh as much as I cry; to get my work done and try to love somebody and have the courage to accept the love in return.
Maya Angelou – [Hope]
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.
Maya Angelou – [Jokes and Jokers]
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.''
Maya Angelou – [Nature]
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.
Maya Angelou – [Children]
Since time is the one immaterial object which we cannot influence — neither speed up nor slow down, add to nor diminish — it is an imponderably valuable gift. Each of us has a few minutes a day or a few hours a week which we could donate to an old folks home or a children's hospital ward. The elderly whose pillows we plump or whose water pitchers we refill may or may not thank us for our gift, but the gift is upholding the foundation of the universe.
Maya Angelou – [Time and Time Management]