Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

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

Related Quotes:

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

" Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness. "

" 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. "

" Like a pianist runs her fingers over the keys, I'll search my mind for what to say. Now, the poem may want you to write it. And then sometimes you see a situation and think, 'I'd like to write about that.' Those are two different ways of being approached by a poem, or approaching a poem. "

" To take a few nouns, and a few pronouns, and adverbs and adjectives, and put them together, ball them up, and throw them against the wall to make them bounce. That's what Norman Mailer did. That's what James Baldwin did, and Joan Didion did, and that's what I do - that's what I mean to do. "

" 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 have a son, who is my heart. A wonderful young man, daring and loving and strong and kind. "

" Courage - you develop courage by doing small things like just as if you wouldn't want to pick up a 100-pound weight without preparing yourself. "

" At one time, you could sit on the Rue de la Paix in Paris or at the Habima Theater in Tel Aviv or in Medina and you could see a person come in, black, white, it didn't matter. You said, 'That's an American' because there's a readiness to smile and to talk to people. "

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

" I was a dancer for many years. I was a premier dancer with 'Porgy and Bess,' the opera. And I taught dance some, in different places. "

" One of my lungs is half gone, and the other half, because I smoked for years, has a lesion. So I can't swim anymore and had the swimming pool covered over. Now it's what I call the dance pavilion, and so I and my friends sit out and put music on and watch people dance. "

" Self-pity in its early stage is as snug as a feather mattress. Only when it hardens does it become uncomfortable. "

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

" 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. "

" I am grateful to be a woman. I must have done something great in another life. "

" Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him. "

" I know for sure that loves saves me and that it is here to save us all. "

" I never had that feeling that I had to carry the weight of somebody's ignorance around with me. And that was true for racists who wanted to use the 'n' word when talking about me or about my people, or the stupidity of people who really wanted to belittle other folks because they weren't pretty or they weren't rich or they weren't clever. "

" When the human race neglects its weaker members, when the family neglects its weakest one - it's the first blow in a suicidal movement. I see the neglect in cities around the country, in poor white children in West Virginia and Virginia and Kentucky - in the big cities, too, for that matter. "

" 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. That's what you rely on. You know what's right to do. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Everyone has at least one story, and each of us is funny if we admit it. You have to admit you're the funniest person you've ever heard of. "

" My life has been one great big joke, a dance that's walked a song that's spoke, I laugh so hard I almost choke when I think about myself. "

" Eating is so intimate. It's very sensual. When you invite someone to sit at your table and you want to cook for them, you're inviting a person into your life. "

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

" As far as I knew white women were never lonely, except in books. White men adored them, Black men desired them and Black women worked for them. "

" All information belongs to everybody all the time. It should be available. It should be accessible to the child, to the woman, to the man, to the old person, to the semiliterate, to the presidents of universities, to everyone. It should be open. "