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" 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. "

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" I know that I'm not the easiest person to live with. The challenge I put on myself is so great that the person I live with feels himself challenged. I bring a lot to bear, and I don't know how not to. "

Maya Angelou

Great

Challenge

Know

" We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated. "

" 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. "

" I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. "

" 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.' "

" Autobiography is awfully seductive; it's wonderful. Once I got into it, I realized I was following a tradition established by Frederick Douglass - the slave narrative - speaking in the first-person singular, talking about the first-person plural, always saying 'I,' meaning 'we.' "

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

" 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. "

" I write some country music. There's a song called 'I Hope You Dance.' Incredible. I was going to write that poem; somebody beat me to it. "

Maya Angelou

Dance

You

" I love the melodies in the Old Testament, how preachers highlight them when they read from the Scripture. But I was influenced forever by the New Testament. I love the Beatitudes, informing us that the meek shall inherit the earth. "

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

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

" 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.' "

" 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. "

" Whenever I want to laugh, I read a wonderful book, 'Children's Letters to God.' You can open it anywhere. One I read recently said, 'Dear God, thank you for the baby brother, but what I prayed for was a puppy.' "

" 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. "

" My great hope is to laugh as much as I cry; to get my work done and try to love somebody and have the courage to accept the love in return. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" A cynical young person is almost the saddest sight to see, because it means that he or she has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing. "

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

" You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them. "

" I want to write so well that a person is 30 or 40 pages in a book of mine... before she realizes she's reading. "

" 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. "

Maya Angelou

Dreams

Musicians

" In so many ways, segregation shaped me, and education liberated me. "

" 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. "

" There's something which impels us to show our inner souls. The more courageous we are, the more we succeed in explaining what we know. "

Maya Angelou

Know

Show

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "