M Angelou Quotes

#1. That knowledge humbles me, melts my bones, closes my ears, and makes my teeth rock loosely in their gums. And it also liberates me. I am a big bird winging over high mountains, down into serene valleys. I am ripples of waves on silver seas. I'm a spring leaf trembling in anticipation.

Maya Angelou

#2. 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.

Maya Angelou

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

Maya Angelou

#4. I'm grateful to be of use. I will not be misused or abused, but I will be of use to anybody.

Maya Angelou

#5. 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.'

Maya Angelou

#6. 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.

Maya Angelou

#7. You rose into my life like a promised sunrise, brightening my days with the light in your eyes. I've never been so strong. Now I'm where I belong.

Maya Angelou

#8. I know that when I pray, something wonderful happens. Not just to the person or persons for whom I'm praying, but also something wonderful happens to me. I'm grateful that I'm heard.

Maya Angelou

#9. Nature has no mercy at all. Nature says, "I'm going to snow. If you have on a bikini and no snowshoes, that's tough. I am going to snow anyway."

Maya Angelou

#10. When I say 'I am a Christian', I'm not shouting 'I'm saved'. I'm whispering 'I get lost'. That is why I chose this way ...

Maya Angelou

#11. I'm a feminist. I've been a female for a long time now. It'd be stupid not to be on my own side.

Maya Angelou

#12. 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.

Maya Angelou

#13. You have to develop ways so that you can take up for yourself, and then you take up for someone else. And so sooner or later, you have enough courage to really stand up for the human race and say, 'I'm a representative.'

Maya Angelou

#14. Modesty is a learned affectation. It's no good. Humility is great, because humility says, 'There was someone before me. I'm following in somebody's footsteps.'

Maya Angelou

#15. I love "Phenomenal Woman." The experiences she had of being African American in the U.S. - that itself is a task. I appreciate the hardships Maya Angelou went through for our generation. I'm super influenced by the black people that paved the way for us.

Serena Williams

#16. I'm very blessed that I have a healthy temper. I can become quite angry and burning in anger, but I have never been bitter. Bitterness is a corrosive, terrible acid. It just eats you and makes you sick.

Maya Angelou

#17. Whenever I'm around some who is modest, I think, 'Run like hell and all of fire.' You don't want modesty, you want humility.

Maya Angelou

#18. 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.

Maya Angelou

#19. I love living. I love that I'm alive to love my age. There are many people who went to bed just as I did yesterday evening and didn't wake this morning. I love and feel very blessed that I did. I love, too, that I know a little more today than I did yesterday, or I simply know it more profoundly.

Maya Angelou

#20. 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.

Maya Angelou

#21. I'm a religious woman. And I feel I have responsibility. I have no modesty at all. I'm even afraid of it - it's a learned affectation and it's just stuck on me like decals. Now I pray for humility because that comes from inside out.

Maya Angelou

#22. 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

#23. It's amazing. I can do anything. And do it well. Any good thing, I can do it. That's why I am who I am, yes, because God loves me and I'm amazed at it. I'm grateful for it.

Maya Angelou

#24. I've tried to be totally present, so that when I'm finished with a piece of work, I'm finished ... The work, once completed, does not need me. The work I'm working on needs my total concentration. The one that's finished doesn't belong to me anymore. It belongs to itself.

Maya Angelou

#25. I'm a serious aficionada of country music - Reba McEntire, Toby Keith, Montgomery Gentry. I've even written some songs. They haven't done anything of mine yet. But it's only a matter of time.

Maya Angelou

#26. I'm young as morning
and fresh as dew.
Everybody loves me
and so do you.

Maya Angelou

#27. It's the fire in my eyes, And the flash of my teeth, The swing in my waist, And the joy in my feet. I'm a woman Phenomenally.

Maya Angelou

#28. The writer has to take the most used, most familiar objects - nouns, pronouns, verbs, adverbs - ball them together and make them bounce, turn them a certain way and make people get into a romantic mood; and another way, into a bellicose mood. I'm most happy to be a writer.

Maya Angelou

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

Maya Angelou

#30. I love a Hebrew National hot dog with an ice-cold Corona - no lime. If the phone rings, I won't answer until I'm done.

Maya Angelou

#31. I'm grateful to be an American. I am grateful that we can be angry at the terrorist assault and at the same time be intelligent enough not to hold a grudge against every Arab and every Muslim.

Maya Angelou

#32. Go," she whispered. "Go. Show them you spell your name W-O-M-A-N.

Maya Angelou

#33. Laugh and dare to try to love somebody, starting with yourself. You must love yourself first, of course, and you must protect yourself so that nobody overrides you, overrules you, or steps on you. Just say, 'Just a minute. I'm worth everything, dear.'

Maya Angelou

#34. I think I know that I deserve better. And so I try for better. I'm never so put off that I would ever walk out of a place not having tried the best I could.

Maya Angelou

#35. I'm not a writer who teaches. I'm a teacher who writes.

Maya Angelou

#36. 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.'

Maya Angelou

#37. 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.

Maya Angelou

#38. 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.

Maya Angelou

#39. What I try to do is write. I may write for two weeks 'the cat sat on the mat, that is that, not a rat,'.... And it might be just the most boring and awful stuff. But I try. When I'm writing, I write. And then it's as if the muse is convinced that I'm serious and says, 'Okay. Okay. I'll come.

Maya Angelou

#40. 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.

Maya Angelou

#41. The first thing I do in the morning when I awaken is say, 'Thank you, Lord!' I'm grateful to be alive, and I'm going to try to tell the truth as well as I know and tell it as eloquently as I can so that people can hear it.

Maya Angelou

#42. 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.

Maya Angelou

#43. I know that one of the great arts that the writer develops is the art of saying, 'No. No, I'm finished. Bye.' And leaving it alone. I will not write it into the ground. I will not write the life out of it. I won't do that.

Maya Angelou

#44. All riddles are blues, / And all blues are sad, / And I'm only mentioning / Some blues I've had.

Maya Angelou

#45. I'm a writer and writers either have good memories or nothing at all.

Maya Angelou

#46. I want to be a good human being. I'm doing my best, and I'm working at it.

Maya Angelou

#47. Whenever something went wrong when I was young - if I had a pimple or if my hair broke - my mom would say, 'Sister mine, I'm going to make you some soup.' And I really thought the soup would make my pimple go away or my hair stronger.

Maya Angelou

#48. 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.

Maya Angelou

#49. 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.

Maya Angelou

#50. I might have it at six-fifteen a.m. just as soon as I get in, but usually it's about eleven o'clock when I'll have a glass of sherry.

Maya Angelou

#51. I'm a positive thinker and actor. I look at a glass; a negative person sees the glass and says: too bad it's half empty ... I look at the same glass and say: Hallelujah!! It's half full!!!

Maya Angelou

#52. 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.'

Maya Angelou

#53. Teachers of my
early youth
Taught forgiveness
stressed the truth
Here then is my
Christian lack:
If I'm struck then
I'll strike back.

Maya Angelou

#54. You don't want modesty, you want humility. Humility comes from inside out. It says someone was here before me and I'm here because I've been paid for. I have something to do and I will do that because I'm paying for someone else who has yet to come.

Maya Angelou

#55. I have a feeling that I make a very good friend, and I'm a good mother, and a good sister, and a good citizen. I am involved in life itself - all of it. And I have a lot of energy and a lot of nerve.

Maya Angelou

#56. She liberated me from a society that would have had me think of myself as the lower of the low. She liberated me to life. And from that time to this time, I have taken life by the lapels and I have said, "I'm with you, kid.

Maya Angelou

#57. 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.

Maya Angelou

#58. If I'm here, I'll be trying to be a better human being, a better writer, a better friend and a better beloved.

Maya Angelou

#59. When I walk in, they may like me or dislike me, but everybody knows I'm here

Maya Angelou

#60. 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

#61. Look what you've already come through! Don't deny it. Say I'm stronger than I thought I was

Maya Angelou

#62. When I'm writing, I am trying to find out who I am, who we are, what we're capable of, how we feel, how we lose and stand up, and go on from darkness into darkness.

Maya Angelou

#63. I'm happy ... I laugh as much as I can and cry when I have to, without apology. I think that's happy.

Maya Angelou

#64. I'm interested in women's health because I'm a woman. I'd be a darn fool not to be on my own side.

Maya Angelou