Quotes by "Maya Angelou"

A certain person wondered why a big strong girl like me wouldn't keep a job which paid a normal salary. I took my time to lead her and to read her every page. Even minimal people can't survive on minimal wage. A certain person wondered why I wait all week for you. I didn't have the words to describe just what you do. I said you had the motion of the ocean in your walk, and when you solve my riddles you don't even have to talk.

I find relief from the questions only when I concede that I am not obliged to know everything. I remind myself it is sufficient to know what I know, and that what I know, may not always be true.

It was awful to be Negro and have no control over my life. It was brutal to be young and already trained to sit quietly and listen to charges brought against my color with no chance of defense. We should all be dead. I thought I should like to see us all dead, one on top of the other. A pyramid of flesh with the whitefolks on the bottom, as the broad base, then the Indians with their silly tomahawks and teepees and wigwams and treaties, the Negroes with their mops and recipes and cotton sacks and spirituals sticking out of their mouths. The Dutch children should all stumble in their wooden shoes and break their necks. The French should choke to death on the Louisiana Purchase (1803) while silkworms ate all the Chinese with their stupid pigtails. As a species, we were an abomination. All of us.

Ah, Momma. I had never looked at death before, peered into its yawning chasm for the face of a beloved. For days my mind staggered out of balance. I reeled on a precipice of knowledge that even if I were rich enough to travel all over the world, I would never find Momma. If I were as good as God’s angels and as pure as the Mother of Christ, I could never have Momma’s rough slow hands pat my cheek or braid my hair. Death to the young is more than that undiscovered country; despite its inevitability, it is a place having reality only in song or in other people's grief.

সুশ্রী মহিলারা বিস্মিত হয় আমার রহস্যটা কি ভেবে। আমার নেই কোন আকর্ষণ কিংবা শারিরীক সৌষ্ঠব। যেমন থাকে ফ্যাশন মডেলদের, কিন্তু যখন ওদের শোনাই আমার গল্প, ওরা ভাবে আমি বুঝি বানিয়ে বলছি। আমি বলি, সবই তো আমার নাগালের ভেতর, আমার পশ্চাদের আকার আমার পা ফেলার ভঙ্গি, আমার ঠোঁটের বাঁক। কারণ আমি এক নারী বিস্ময়করভাবে। বিস্ময়কর নারী, সে তো আমিই। আমি যখন কোন ঘরে ঢুকি ঠিক যেমনভাবে আমাকে ঢুকতে দেখতে চান কিংবা কোন পুরুষের দিকে এগোই, তারা সবাই উঠে দাঁড়ায় কিংবা হাঁটু ভেঙে সৌজন্য দেখায়, কিন্তু তার পরই ভনভন ছেঁকে ধরে একসময় ঠিক এক ঝাঁক মৌমাছি যেমন। আমি ভাবি, বোধ হয় আমার চোখের ভেতরের আগুন, কিংবা আমার সুন্দর দাঁতের ঝিলিক, অথবা আমার নিতম্বের স্পন্দন, কিংবা আমার পায়ের ছন্দ, এসব মিলিয়ে বিস্ময়কর নারী আমি। বিস্ময়কর নারী সে তো আমিই। পুরুষরা বিস্ময়ে হতবাক আমার ভেতরের আমাকে দেখে। অথচ সেটাকে ছুঁতে তারা অক্ষম, আমর গভীরের সেই অলৌকিকতাকে। আমি যখন তাদের কাছে উম্মোচন করতে চাই আমার অন্তরের অতলকে, তখনও তাদের দৃষ্টিগোচর হয় না সেই অতল। আমি বলি, রহস্যটা আমার দুষ্টু গ্রীবার ভাঁজে, আমার হাসির রৌদ্রকরোজ্বলে, আমার নিশ্বাসের উঠানামায়, যা দিয়ে গড়া আমার একান্ত গভীর-গভীরতর শৈলী। আমি এক নারী, বিস্ময়রভাবে। বিস্ময়কর নারী, সে তো আমিই। এখন নিশ্চয় সবাই বুঝতে পারছেন আমি মাথা কেন নোয়াই না। আমার কন্ঠস্বর অযথা উচ্চমার্গে ওঠে না, কিংবা অকারণে হই না অস্থির, কথা বলি না কঠিন স্বরভঙ্গীতে। আমাকে পাশ দিয়ে যেতে দেখলে কেন আপনারা অযথা প্রগলভ, বুঝি না। আমি ভাবি, আমার চলার শব্দ, আমার চুলের বিন্যাস, আমার কোমল করতল, আমার যত্নের আলতো স্পর্শ, আপনাদের সবারই ভীষণ ভীষণ প্রয়োজন। কারণ আমি এক নারী বিস্ময়করভাবে। বিস্ময়কর নারী, সে তো আমিই।

Making a decision to write was a lot like deciding to jump into a frozen lake.

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.

When I am 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. I'm trying for that. But I'm also trying for the language. I'm trying to see how it can really sound. I really love language. I love it for wate it does for us, how it allows us to explain the pain and the glory, the nuances and delicacies of our existence. And then it allows us to laugh, allows us to show wit. Real wit is shown in language. We need language.

I speak to the Black experience, but I am always talking about the human condition--about what we can endure, dream, fail at and survive.

When we give cheerfully and accept gratefully, everyone is blessed.

Whining is not only graceless, but can be dangerous. It can alert a brute that a victim is in the neighborhood.

There were people who went to sleep last night, poor and rich and white and black, but they will never wake again. And those dead folks would give anything at all for just five minutes of this weather or ten minutes of plowing. So you watch yourself about complaining. What you're supposed to do when you don't like a thing is change it. If you can't change it, change the way you think about it.

There is nothing so pitiful as a young cynic because he has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing.

Since time is the one immaterial object which we cannot influence—neither speed up nor slow down, add to nor diminish—it is an imponderably valuable gift.

My mind, it was certain, was a well-oiled mechanism which worked swiftly and seminoiselessly. I often competed with radio contestants on quiz programs and usually won hands down in my living room. Oh, my mental machine could have excited anyone. I meant anyone interested in a person who had memorized the Presidents of the United States in chronological order, the capitals of the world, the minerals of the earth and the generic names of various species. There weren't too many callers for those qualifications and I had to admit that I was greatly lacking in the popular attractions of physical beauty and womanly wiles.

I found it hard to think of leaving my books. They had been my elevators out of the midden, and to whom could I entrust such close friends?

He was a simple man who had no inferiority complex about his lack of education, and even more amazing no superiority complex because he had succeeded despite that lack.

Segregation shaped me; education liberated me.

My mother's gifts of courage to me were both large and small. The latter are woven so subtly into the fabric of my psyche that I can hardly distinguish where she stops and I begin.

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.