Maya Angelou

“I dreamt we walked together along the shore. We made satisfying small talk and laughed. This morning I found sand in my shoe and a seashell in my pocket. Was I only dreaming?”

“Determine to live life with flair and laughter.”

“When you do nothing you feel overwhelmed and powerless. But when you get involved you feel the sense of hope and accomplishment that comes from knowing you are working to make things better.”

“To grow up is to stop putting blame on parents”

“The ache for home lives in all of us. The safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.”

“A person is the product of their dreams. So make sure to dream great dreams. And then try to live your dream.”

“Without courage we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can't be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.”

“All knowledge is spendable currency, depending on the market.”

“I believe that one can never leave home. I believe that one carries the shadows, the dreams, the fears and the dragons of home under one's skin, at the extreme corners of one's eyes and possibly in the gristle of the earlobe.”

“I make writing as much a part of my life as I do eating or listening to music.”

“No,nobody but nobody can make it out her alone.”

“Does my sexiness upset you? Does it come as a surpriseThat I dance like I've got diamonds At the meeting of my thighs?”

“Life is going to give you just what you put in it. Put your whole heart in everything you do, and pray, then you can wait.”

“The city became for me the ideal of what I wanted to be as a grown-up. Friendly, but never gushing, cool but not frigid or distant, distinguished without the awful stiffness.”

“You are the sum total of everything you've seen, heard, eaten, smelled, been told, forgot- it's all right there.”

“All I got to do is stay black and die.”

“Take the blinders from your visiontake the padding from your earsand confess you've heard me crying and admit you've seen my tears.”

“Anything that works against you can also work for you once you understand the Principle of Reverse.”

“A story went the rounds about a San Franciscan white matron who refused to sit beside a Negro civilian on the streetcar, even after he made room for her on the seat. Her explanation was that she would not sit beside a draft dodger who was a Negro as well. She added that the least he could do was fight for his country the way her son was fighting on Iwo Jima. The story said that the man pulled his body away from the window to show an armless sleeve. He said quietly and with great dignity, "Then ask your son to look around for my arm, which I left over there.”

“Did you want to see me broken?Bowed head and lowered eyes?Shoulders falling down like teardrops.Weakened by my soulful cries.You may shoot me with your words,You may cut me with your eyes,You may kill me with your hatefulness,But still, like air, I’ll rise.”

“Preach it, I say preach it.”

“To those who have given up on love: I say, "Trust life a little bit.”

“Love life. Engage in it. Give it all you've got. Love it with a passion because life truly does give back, many times over, what you put into it.”

“When I am writing, I am trying to find out who I am, who we are, what we're capable of, how we feel, how we lose and stand up, and go on from darkness into darkness. I'm trying for that. But I'm also trying for the language. I'm trying to see how it can really sound. I really love language. I love it for wate it does for us, how it allows us to explain the pain and the glory, the nuances and delicacies of our existence. And then it allows us to laugh, allows us to show wit. Real wit is shown in language. We need language.”

“Instead, pursue the things you love doing, and then do them so well that people can't take their eyes off you.”

“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.”

“Each of us, famous or infamous, is a role model for somebody, and if we aren't, we should behave as though we are -- cheerful, kind, loving, courteous. Because you can be sure someone is watching and taking deliberate and diligent notes.”

“We are more alike, my friends, than we are unalike.”

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

“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.”

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

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

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

“The sadness of the women's movement is that they don't allow the necessity of love. See, I don't personally trust any revolution where love is not allowed.”

“Love is like a virus. It can happen to anybody at any time.”

“When we give cheerfully and accept gratefully, everyone is blessed.”

“It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength.”

“When Great Trees FallWhen great trees fall,rocks on distant hills shudder,lions hunker downin tall grasses,and even elephantslumber after safety.When great trees fallin forests,small things recoil into silence,their senseseroded beyond fear.When great souls die,the air around us becomeslight, rare, sterile.We breathe, briefly.Our eyes, briefly,see witha hurtful clarity.Our memory, suddenly sharpened,examines,gnaws on kind wordsunsaid,promised walksnever taken.Great souls die andour reality, bound tothem, takes leave of us.Our souls,dependent upon theirnurture,now shrink, wizened.Our minds, formedand informed by theirradiance,fall away.We are not so much maddenedas reduced to the unutterable ignoranceof dark, coldcaves.And when great souls die,after a period peace blooms,slowly and alwaysirregularly. Spaces fillwith a kind ofsoothing electric vibration.Our senses, restored, neverto be the same, whisper to us.They existed. They existed.We can be. Be and bebetter. For they existed.”

“The world had taken a deep breath and was having doubts about continuing to revolve.”

“It takes the human voice to infuse them with the shades of deeper meaning.”

“Make every effort to change things you do not like. If you cannot make a change, change the way you have been thinking. You might find a new solution.”

“If you only have one smile in you, give it to the people you love.”

“I want all my senses engaged. Let me absorb the world's variety and uniqueness.”

“Segregation shaped me; education liberated me.”

“Ritie, don't worry 'cause you ain't pretty. Plenty pretty women I seen digging ditches or worse. You smart. I swear to God, I rather you have a good mind than a cute behind.”

“I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself.”

“Life likes to be taken by the lapel and told, "I'm with you kid. Let's go!”

“If I could give you one thought, it would be to lift someone up. Lift a stranger up--lift her up. I would ask you, mother and father, brother and sister, lovers, mother and daughter, father and son, lift someone. The very idea of lifting someone up will lift you, as well.”

“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.”

“I don't trust people who don't love themselves and tell me, 'I love you.' ... There is an African saying which is: Be careful when a naked person offers you a shirt.”