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...

Some critics will write ‘Maya Angelou is a natural writer’ – which is right after being a natural heart surgeon.

I like chicken a lot because chicken is generous – that is to say, it’s obedient. It will do whatever you tell it to do.

When I cook for my family on Christmas, I make feijoada, a South American dish of roasted and smoked meats like ham, pork, beef, lamb, and bacon – all served with black beans and rice....

The Black female is assaulted in her tender years by all those common forces of nature at the same time she is caught in the tripartite crossfire of masculine prejudice, white illogical hate and Black...

All great achievements require time.

We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.

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.

Until recently each generation found it more expedient to plead guilty to the charge of being young and ignorant, easier to take the punishment meted out by the older generation (which had itself confessed to...

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

Life loves the liver of it.

I find in my poetry and prose the rhythms and imagery of the best – I mean, when I’m at my best – of the good Southern black preachers. The lyricism of the spirituals and...

If you want what you’re saying heard, then take your time and say it so that the listener will actually hear it. You might save somebody’s life. Your own, first.

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...

One of the wonderful things about Oprah: She teaches you to keep on stepping.

That’s the biggest gift I can give anybody: ‘Wake up, be aware of who you are, what you’re doing and what you can do to prevent yourself from becoming ill.’

I created myself. I have taught myself so much.

Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope.

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.

There were people who went to sleep last night, poor and rich and white and black, but they will never wake again. And those dead folks would give anything at all for just five minutes...

The customs are as formalised as an eighteenth-century minuet, and a child at the race’s knee learns the moves and twirls by osmosis and observation.

My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.

We are braver and wiser because they existed, those strong women and strong men… We are who we are because they were who they were. It’s wise to know where you come from, who called...

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.

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

I love the song ‘I Hope You Dance’ by Lee Ann Womack. I was going to write that song, but someone beat me to it.

I’ve never had a dislike for men. I’ve been badly treated by some. But I’ve been loved greatly by some. I married a lot of them.

I keep a hotel room in my town, although I have a large house. And I go there at about 5:30 in the morning, and I start working. And I don’t allow anybody to come...

If more Africans had eaten missionaries, the continent would be in better shape

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.

It’s the fire in my eyes, And the flash of my teeth, The swing in my waist, And the joy in my feet. I’m a woman Phenomenally.

Sister, there are people who went to sleep all over the world last night, poor and rich and white and black, but they will never wake again. Sister, those who expected to rise did not,...

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...

I’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....

If we accept being talked to any kind of a way, then we are telling ourselves we are not quite worth the best. And if we have the effrontery to talk to anybody with less...

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

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.

The poetry you read has been written for you, each of you – black, white, Hispanic, man, woman, gay, straight.

The hope, the hope that lives in the breast of the black American, is just so tremendous that it overwhelms me sometimes.

If I walked into the kitchen without washing my hands as a kid, I’d hear a loud ‘A-hem!’ from my mother or grandmother. Now I count on other people to do the same.

Alone”Lying, thinkingLast nightHow to find my soul a homeWhere water is not thirstyAnd bread loaf is not stoneI came up with one thingAnd I don’t believe I’m wrongThat nobody,But nobodyCan make it out here alone.Alone,...

Each person deserves a day away in which no problems are confronted, no solutions searched for.

Courage is the most important of all the virtues because without courage, you can’t practice any other virtue consistently.

There is nothing quite so tragic as a young cynic, because it means the person has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing.

I had given up some youth for knowledge, but my gain was more valuable than the loss

Whatever you want to do, if you want to be great at it, you have to love it and be able to make sacrifices for it.

The best comfort food will always be greens, cornbread, and fried chicken.

I’ve always written. There’s a journal which I kept from about 9 years old. The man who gave it to me lived across the street from the store and kept it when my grandmother’s papers...

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

Somehow, we have come to the erroneous belief that we are all but flesh, blood, and bones, and that’s all. So we direct our values to material things.