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" 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. "

Maya Angelou

Myself

My Life

Know

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" I'm not a writer who teaches. I'm a teacher who writes. "

" I'm always disappointed when people don't live up to their potential. I know that a number of people look down on themselves and consequently on everybody who looks like them. But that, too, can change. "

" 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. "

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

" I would be stupid not to be on my own side. But I'm a human being, too. And I'm on the side of human beings, rather than on the side of crocodiles. "

" If I'm the people's poet, then I ought to be in people's hands - and, I hope, in their heart. "

" The first decade of the twentieth century was not a great time to be born black and poor and female in St. Louis, Missouri, but Vivian Baxter was born black and poor, to black and poor parents. Later she would grow up and be called beautiful. As a grown woman she would be known as the butter-colored lady with the blowback hair. "

" 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. "

" If you're a human being, you can attempt to do what other human beings have done. We don't understand talent any more than we understand electricity. "

" Don't let the incidents which take place in life bring you low. And certainly don't whine. You can be brought low, that's OK, but don't be reduced by them. Just say, 'That's life.' "

" My mom was a terrible parent of young children. And thank God - I thank God every time I think of it - I was sent to my paternal grandmother. Ah, but my mother was a great parent of a young adult. "

" If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform one million realities. "

" I was born in St. Louis but lived there just for a few minutes in my life. "

" 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 were destroyed. I'd written some essays. I loved poetry, still do. But I really, really loved it then. "

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

" 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. "

" Achievement brings its own anticlimax. "

" I wasn't a pretty girl. I was six feet tall at 15, you know. "

" I know that I've been guided by God. I am obedient. "

" I learned a long time ago the wisest thing I can do is be on my own side, be an advocate for myself and others like me. "

" Nothing succeeds like success. Get a little success, and then just get a little more. "

Maya Angelou

Nothing

Little

" 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.' "

" What is a fear of living? It's being preeminently afraid of dying. It is not doing what you came here to do, out of timidity and spinelessness. The antidote is to take full responsibility for yourself - for the time you take up and the space you occupy. If you don't know what you're here to do, then just do some good. "

" I speak to the black experience, but I am always talking about the human condition. "

" At one time in my life, from the time I was seven until I was about 13, I didn't speak. I only spoke to my brother. The reason I didn't speak: I had been molested, and I told the name of the molester to my brother who told it to the family. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you can't practice any other virtue consistently. You can practice any virtue erratically, but nothing consistently without courage. "

" It's still scary every time I go back to the past. Each morning, my heart catches. When I get there, I remember how the light was, where the draft was coming from, what odors were in the air. When I write, I get all the weeping out. "

" It's one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself, to forgive. Forgive everybody. "