Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou

"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."
233 Quotes
"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
"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. It's festive but different."
Maya Angelou
"Writing and cookery are just two different means of communication."
Maya Angelou
"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."
Maya Angelou
"If you have only one smile in you give it to the people you love."
Maya Angelou
"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."
Maya Angelou
"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."
Maya Angelou
"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."
Maya Angelou
"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."
Maya Angelou
"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."
Maya Angelou
"I respect myself and insist upon it from everybody. And because I do it, I then respect everybody, too."
Maya Angelou
"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."
Maya Angelou
"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
"If we lose love and self respect for each other, this is how we finally die."
Maya Angelou
"I love the song 'I Hope You Dance' by Lee Ann Womack. I was going to write that song, but someone beat me to it."
Maya Angelou
"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."
Maya Angelou
"If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude."
Maya Angelou
"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
"I'll never know why it was important to him that the couple (he said it later that he'd never seen them before) would take a picture of the whole Mr. Johnson back to Little Rock. He must have been tired of being crippled, as prisoners tire of penitentiary bars and the guilty tire of blame. The high topped shoes and the cane, his uncontrollable muscles and thick tongue, and the looks he suffered of either contempt or pity had simply worn him out, and for one afternoon, one part of an afternoon, he wanted no part of them. I understood and felt closer to him at that moment than ever before or since."
Maya Angelou
"If you’re not angry, you’re either a stone, or you’re too sick to be angry. You should be angry. You must not be bitter. Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. It doesn’t do anything to the object of its displeasure. So use that anger, yes. You write it. You paint it. You dance it. You march it. You vote it. You do everything about it. You talk it. Never stop talking it."
Maya Angelou
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