Quotes by Maya Angelou

If we lose love and self respect for each other, this is how we finally die.

I have great respect for the past. If you dont know where youve come from, you dont know where youre going. I have respect for the past, but Im a person of the moment. Im here, and I do my best to be completely centered at the place Im at, then I go forward to the next place.

Once you appreciate one of your blessings, one of your senses, your sense of hearing, then you begin to respect the sense of seeing and touching and tasting, you learn to respect all the senses.

I respect myself and insist upon it from everybody. And because I do it, I then respect everybody, too.

The fact that the adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amazement, distaste and even belligerance. It is seldom accepted as an inevitable outcome of the struggle won by survivors, and deserves respect if not enthusiastic acceptance.

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.

Those of us who submitted or surrendered our ideas and dreams and identities to the leaders must take back our rights, our identities, our responsibilities.

I never expected anyone to take care of me, but in my wildest dreams and juvenile yearnings, I wanted the house with the picket fence from June Allyson movies. I knew that was yearning like one yearns to fly.

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.

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

In the flush of loves 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.

Writing and cookery are just two different means of communication.

When I cook for my family on Christmas, I make feijoada, a South American dish of roasted and smoked meats like ham, pork, beef, lamb, and bacon - all served with black beans and rice. Its festive but different.

I work very hard, and I play very hard. Im grateful for life. And I live it - I believe life loves the liver of it. I live it.

Im not a writer who teaches. Im a teacher who writes.

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

Fighting for ones 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.

Its still scary every time I go back to the past. Each morning, my heart catches. When I get there, I remember how the light was, where the draft was coming from, what odors were in the air. When I write, I get all the weeping out.

I keep a hotel room in my town, although I have a large house. And I go there at about 5:30 in the morning, and I start working. And I dont allow anybody to come in that room. I work on yellow pads and with ballpoint pens. I keep a Bible, a thesaurus, a dictionary, and a bottle of sherry. I stay there until midday.

Im grateful to intelligent people. That doesnt mean educated. That doesnt mean intellectual. I mean really intelligent. What black old people used to call mother wit means intelligence that you had in your mothers womb. Thats what you rely on. You know whats right to do.