Maya Angelou Quotations

If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude.

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

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

When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.

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

If you have only one smile in you give it to the people you love.

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

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.

Try to be a rainbow in someone's cloud.

Nothing will work unless you do.

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

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

One isn't necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can't be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.

If you have only one smile in you, give it to the people you love. Don't be surly at home, then go out in the street and start grinning 'Good morning' at total strangers.

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

First best is falling in love. Second best is being in love. Least best is falling out of love. But any of it is better than never having been in love.

A wise woman wishes to be no one's enemy; a wise woman refuses to be anyone's victim.

The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.

It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength.

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.

The thing to do, it seems to me, is to prepare yourself so you can be a rainbow in somebody else's cloud. Somebody who may not look like you. May not call God the same name you call God - if they call God at all. I may not dance your dances or speak your language. But be a blessing to somebody. That's what I think.

My greatest blessing has been the birth of my son. My next greatest blessing has been my ability to turn people into children of mine.

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

History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.

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.

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

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

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.

At 50, I began to know who I was. It was like waking up to myself.

You are the sum total of everything you've ever seen, heard, eaten, smelled, been told, forgot - it's all there. Everything influences each of us, and because of that I try to make sure that my experiences are positive.

In the flush of love's light, we dare be brave. And suddenly we see that love costs all we are, and will ever be. Yet it is only love which sets us free.

I thank God I'm myself and for the life I'm given to live and for friends and lovers and beloveds, and I thank God for knowing that all those people have already paid for me.

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.

When the human race neglects its weaker members, when the family neglects its weakest one - it's the first blow in a suicidal movement.

In all my work, I try to say - 'You may be given a load of sour lemons, why not try to make a dozen lemon meringue pies?'

Modesty is a learned affectation. And as soon as life slams the modest person against the wall, that modesty drops.

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

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.

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.

Human beings love poetry. They don't even know it sometimes... whether they're the songs of Bono, or the songs of Justin Bieber... they're listening to poetry.

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

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

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 know how much longer I'll be around. I'll probably be writing when the Lord says, 'Maya, Maya Angelou, it's time.'

How wonderful it is to be an American. We have known the best of times and the worst of times.

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

Black people comprehend the South. We understand its weight. It has rested on our backs... I knew that my heart would break if ever I put my foot down on that soil, moist, still, with old hurts. I had to face the fear/loathing at its source or it would consume me whole.

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 wrote some of the worst poetry west of the Rockies. But by the time I was in my 20s, I found myself writing little essays and more poetry - writing at writing.

I did work in a strip club, but I didn't strip. I danced, and I became very popular.

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.

I'm just someone who likes cooking and for whom sharing food is a form of expression.

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.'

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.

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.

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'm working at trying to be a Christian, and that's serious business. It's like trying to be a good Jew, a good Muslim, a good Buddhist, a good Shintoist, a good Zoroastrian, a good friend, a good lover, a good mother, a good buddy - it's serious business.

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.

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

Most plain girls are virtuous because of the scarcity of opportunity to be otherwise.

Don't get older just to get wiser. If you get older, you will be wiser, I believe that - if you dare. But get older because it's fun!

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

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.

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 than courtesy, we tell ourselves and the world we are not very intelligent.

I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by the lapels.

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.

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.'

We write for the same reason that we walk, talk, climb mountains or swim the oceans - because we can. We have some impulse within us that makes us want to explain ourselves to other human beings.

Until blacks and whites see each other as brother and sister, we will not have parity. It's very clear.

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 the directness of gospel songs and the mystery of blues are in my music or in my poetry and prose, or I missed everything.

I think Clinton, after getting into office and into Washington, was shocked at being bludgeoned. So he spent time trying to be all things to all people - one way guaranteed not to be successful or respected in a lion's den. You can't just play around with all those big cats - you've got to take somebody on.

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.

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.

Loving someone liberates the lover as well as the beloved. And that kind of love comes with age.

While the rest of the world has been improving technology, Ghana has been improving the quality of man's humanity to man.

My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy.

Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends.

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.

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

It's good to remember that in crises, natural crises, human beings forget for awhile their ignorances, their biases, their prejudices. For a little while, neighbors help neighbors and strangers help strangers.

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.

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'm very, very serious - I'm serious enough not to take myself too seriously. That means I can be completely wedded to the moment. But when I leave that moment, I want to be completely wedded to the next moment.

There's a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure the truth.

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.

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.

Find a beautiful piece of art. If you fall in love with Van Gogh or Matisse or John Oliver Killens, or if you fall love with the music of Coltrane, the music of Aretha Franklin, or the music of Chopin - find some beautiful art and admire it, and realize that that was created by human beings just like you, no more human, no less.

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 your name.

Hold those things that tell your history and protect them. During slavery, who was able to read or write or keep anything? The ability to have somebody to tell your story to is so important. It says: 'I was here. I may be sold tomorrow. But you know I was here.'

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.

I will not sit in a room with black people when the N word is used. I know it was meant to belittle a person, so I will not sit there and have that poison put on me. Now a black person can say, 'Oh, you know, I can use this word because I'm black.'

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

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

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.

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.

I know some people might think it odd - unworthy even - for me to have written a cookbook, but I make no apologies. The U.S. poet laureate Billy Collins thought I had demeaned myself by writing poetry for Hallmark Cards, but I am the people's poet so I write for the people.

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

I'm happy to be a writer - of prose, poetry, every kind of writing. Every person in the world who isn't a recluse, hermit or mute uses words. I know of no other art form that we always use.

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'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 have great respect for the past. If you don't know where you've come from, you don't know where you're going. I have respect for the past, but I'm a person of the moment. I'm here, and I do my best to be completely centered at the place I'm at, then I go forward to the next place.