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.
Category Archive: Maya Angelou
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.’
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.
A wise woman wishes to be no one’s enemy; a wise woman refuses to be anyone’s victim.
Politicians must set their aims for the high ground and according to our various leanings, Democratic, Republican, Independent, we will follow. Politicians must be told if they continue to sink into the mud of obscenity, they will proceed alone.
In a magazine, one can get – from cover to cover – 15 to 20 different ideas about life and how to live 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.’
Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.
All men are prepared to accomplish the incredible if their ideals are threatened.
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.