The only thing is, people have to develop courage. It is most important of all the virtues. Because without courage, you can't practice any other virtues consistently.
— Maya Angelou
During bad circumstances, which is the human inheritance, you must decide not to be reduced. You have your humanity, and you must not allow anything to reduce that. We are obliged to know we are global citizens. Disasters remind us we are world citizens, whether we like it or not.
I think music is one of the hero/sheroes of the African-American existence.
The best comfort food will always be greens, cornbread, and fried chicken.
We have to confront ourselves. Do we like what we see in the mirror? And, according to our light, according to our understanding, according to our courage, we will have to say yea or nay - and rise!
When younger writers and poets, musicians and painters are weakened by a stemming of funds, they come to me saddened, not as full of dreams and excitement and ideas. I am then weakened and diminished, and made less rich.
I wrote some of the worst poetry west from the Mississippi River, but I wrote. And I finally sometimes got it right.
I speak a number of languages, but none are more beautiful to me than English.
My life has been long, and believing that life loves the liver of it, I have dared to try many things, sometimes trembling, but daring still.
We can learn to see each other and see ourselves in each other and recognize that human beings are more alike than we are unalike.
I would be a liar, a hypocrite, or a fool - and I'm not any of those - to say that I don't write for the reader. I do. But for the reader who hears, who really will work at it, going behind what I seem to say. So I write for myself and that reader who will pay the dues.
I read the Bible to myself; I'll take any translation, any edition, and read it aloud, just to hear the language, hear the rhythm, and remind myself how beautiful English is.
The love of the family, the love of one person can heal. It heals the scars left by a larger society. A massive, powerful society.
It's one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself, to forgive. Forgive everybody.
Modesty is a learned affectation. And as soon as life slams the modest person against the wall, that modesty drops.
Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope.
The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.
Until blacks and whites see each other as brother and sister, we will not have parity. It's very clear.
It's good to remember that in crises, natural crises, human beings forget for awhile their ignorances, their biases, their prejudices. For a little while, neighbors help neighbors and strangers help strangers.
One of the wonderful things about Oprah: She teaches you to keep on stepping.
I love a Hebrew National hot dog with an ice-cold Corona - no lime. If the phone rings, I won't answer until I'm done.
Those of us who submitted or surrendered our ideas and dreams and identities to the 'leaders' must take back our rights, our identities, our responsibilities.
I'm considered wise, and sometimes I see myself as knowing. Most of the time, I see myself as wanting to know. And I see myself as a very interested person. I've never been bored in my life.
Everybody born comes from the Creator trailing wisps of glory. We come from the Creator with creativity. I think that each one of us is born with creativity.
I don't think there's such a thing as autobiographical fiction. If I say it happened, it happened, even if only in my mind.
All great artists draw from the same resource: the human heart, which tells us that we are all more alike than we are unalike.
All 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.
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.
I have a feeling that I make a very good friend, and I'm a good mother, and a good sister, and a good citizen. I am involved in life itself - all of it. And I have a lot of energy and a lot of nerve.
I wasn't a pretty girl. I was six feet tall at 15, you know.
I liked to write from the time I was about 12 or 13. I loved to read. And since I only spoke to my brother, I would write down my thoughts. And I think I wrote some of the worst poetry west of the Rockies. But by the time I was in my 20s, I found myself writing little essays and more poetry - writing at writing.
Timidity makes a person modest. It makes him or her say, 'I'm not worthy of being written up in the record of deeds in heaven or on earth.' Timidity keeps people from their good. They are afraid to say, 'Yes, I deserve it.'
I've learned that you shouldn't go through life with a catcher's mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw something back.
I have found that among its other benefits, giving liberates the soul of the giver.
Growing up, I decided, a long time ago, I wouldn't accept any manmade differences between human beings, differences made at somebody else's insistence or someone else's whim or convenience.
I 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.
Whenever something went wrong when I was young - if I had a pimple or if my hair broke - my mom would say, 'Sister mine, I'm going to make you some soup.' And I really thought the soup would make my pimple go away or my hair stronger.
Cooking certain dishes, like roast pork, reminds me of my mother.
Elimination of illiteracy is as serious an issue to our history as the abolition of slavery.
I work very hard, and I play very hard. I'm grateful for life. And I live it - I believe life loves the liver of it. I live it.
Easy reading is damn hard writing. But if it's right, it's easy. It's the other way round, too. If it's slovenly written, then it's hard to read. It doesn't give the reader what the careful writer can give the reader.
When I write, I tend to twist my hair. Something for my small mind to do, I guess.
I am never proud to participate in violence, yet I know that each of us must care enough for ourselves that we can be ready and able to come to our own defense when and wherever needed.
And if a person is religious, I think it's good, it helps you a bit. But if you're not, at least you can have the sense that there is a condition inside you which looks at the stars with amazement and awe.
I'm working at trying to be a Christian, and that's serious business. It's like trying to be a good Jew, a good Muslim, a good Buddhist, a good Shintoist, a good Zoroastrian, a good friend, a good lover, a good mother, a good buddy - it's serious business.
I think that that's the wisest thing - to prevent illness before we try to cure something.
You can't forgive without loving. And I don't mean sentimentality. I don't mean mush. I mean having enough courage to stand up and say, 'I forgive. I'm finished with it.'
Loving someone liberates the lover as well as the beloved. And that kind of love comes with age.
While the rest of the world has been improving technology, Ghana has been improving the quality of man's humanity to man.
The idea is to write it so that people hear it and it slides through the brain and goes straight to the heart.
