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" Every December, I host a tree-trimming party. I serve chili with cornbread and lots of good wine. It's a wonderful party, and it shows how much adults like to play. "

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" All great artists draw from the same resource: the human heart, which tells us that we are all more alike than we are unalike. "

Maya Angelou

Heart

Same

Great

" The more you know of your history, the more liberated you are. "

Maya Angelou

You

History

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

" 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'm convinced of this: Good done anywhere is good done everywhere. For a change, start by speaking to people rather than walking by them like they're stones that don't matter. As long as you're breathing, it's never too late to do some good. "

" My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. That some people, unable to go to school, were more educated and more intelligent than college professors. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I speak a number of languages, but none are more beautiful to me than English. "

" I believe that every person is born with talent. "

" I don't know how much longer I'll be around. I'll probably be writing when the Lord says, 'Maya, Maya Angelou, it's time.' "

" Won't it be wonderful when black history and native American history and Jewish history and all of U.S. history is taught from one book. Just U.S. history. "

" I admire people who dare to take the language, English, and understand it and understand the melody. "

" When I write, I tend to twist my hair. Something for my small mind to do, I guess. "

" What humility does for one is it reminds us that there are people before me. I have already been paid for. And what I need to do is prepare myself so that I can pay for someone else who has yet to come but who may be here and needs me. "

" Whenever I'm around some who is modest, I think, 'Run like hell and all of fire.' You don't want modesty, you want humility. "

" I never expected anyone to take care of me, but in my wildest dreams and juvenile yearnings, I wanted the house with the picket fence from June Allyson movies. I knew that was yearning like one yearns to fly. "

" I've conducted the Boston Pops! Imagine that! Me! Maya Angelou! I've sang and danced at La Scala! "

Maya Angelou

Boston

Pops

" I like to speak on matters which matter to human beings, and almost everything matters to human beings. "

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

" Fighting for one's freedom, struggling towards being free, is like struggling to be a poet or a good Christian or a good Jew or a good Muslim or good Zen Buddhist. You work all day long and achieve some kind of level of success by nightfall, go to sleep and wake up the next morning with the job still to be done. So you start all over again. "

" 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. "

" I always knew from that moment, from the time I found myself at home in that little segregated library in the South, all the way up until I walked up the steps of the New York City library, I always felt, in any town, if I can get to a library, I'll be OK. It really helped me as a child, and that never left me. "

" I wrote some of the worst poetry west from the Mississippi River, but I wrote. And I finally sometimes got it right. "

" The idea is to write it so that people hear it and it slides through the brain and goes straight to the heart. "

" If you will have a person enslaved, the first thing you must do is convince yourself that the person is subhuman. The second thing you have to do is convince your allies so you'll have some help, and the third and probably unkindest cut of all is to convince that person that he or she is subhuman and deserves it. "

" A black person grows up in this country - and in many places - knowing that racism will be as familiar as salt to the tongue. Also, it can be as dangerous as too much salt. I think that you must struggle for betterment for yourself and for everyone. "

" My grandmother took me to church on Sunday all day long, every Sunday into the night. Then Monday evening was the missionary meeting. Tuesday evening was usher board meeting. Wednesday evening was prayer meeting. Thursday evening was visit the sick. Friday evening was choir practice. I mean, and at all those gatherings, we sang. "

Maya Angelou

Practice

Night

" I was very blessed to have family and friends, but particularly family, who told me I was not only all right, I was just right, so I believe that my brain is a good one, and it's lasting me very well. "

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