Quote

If growing up is painful for the Southern Black girl, being aware of her displacement is the rust on the razor that threatens the throat. It is an unnecessary insult.

Maya Angelou

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Maya Angelou
Age: 86 †
Born: 1928
Born: April 4
Died: 2014
Died: May 28
Author
Autobiographer
Comedian
Dancer
Essayist
Film Director
Film Producer
Human Rights Activist
Journalist
Novelist
Playwright
Politician
St. Louis
Missouri
Marguerite Annie Johnson
Marguerite Johnson
Marguerite Ann Johnson
Marguerite Anne Johnson
Girl
Rust
Black
Unnecessary
Insult
Throat
Displacement
Southern
Caged
Painful
Razor
Aware
Razors
Growing
Threatens

More quotes by Maya Angelou

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People trying to separate people rather than bring us together... please. You don't just see it in America. It's all over the world.
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Fighting for one's 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.
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Troubles are a blessing that force you to change, to believe.
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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.
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I have no modesty. Modesty is a learned affectation. It's like decal stuck up on a person.
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It is this belief in a power larger than myself and other than myself which allows me to venture into the unknown and even the unknowable.
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You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them. Try to be a rainbow in someone else's cloud. Do not complain. Make every effort to change things you do not like. If you cannot make a change, change the way you have been thinking. You might find a new solution.
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Had I not had my grandmother, who dared to be my rainbow in the clouds, I would have been just another sexually abused barefoot black girl on the roads of Arkansas.
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Raising kids is like nailing Jell-O to a tree.
Maya Angelou
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I write because I am a Black woman, listening attentively to her people.
Maya Angelou
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I love wisdom. And you can never be great at anything unless you love it. Not be in love with it, but love the thing, admire the thing. And it seems that if you love the thing, and you don't just want to possess it, it will find you. But if you're in love with the thing, it may run like hell away from you.
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Don't trust people who don't laugh. I don't.
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We may encounter many defeats, but we must not be defeated. It may even be necessary to encounter the defeat, so that we can know who we are.
Maya Angelou
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Some people cannot see a good thing when it is right here, right now. Others can sense a good thing coming when it is days, months, or miles away.
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In Stamps the segregation was so complete that most Black children didn't really, absolutely know what whites looked like.
Maya Angelou
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Would you deny your son or your daughter the ecstasy of finding someone to love?
Maya Angelou
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I wish that we could look into each other's faces, in each other's eyes, and see our own selves. I hope that the children have not been so scarred by their upbringing that they only think fear when they see someone else who looks separate from them.
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Be courageous, but not foolhardy. Walk proud as you are.
Maya Angelou
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You can never go home again, but the truth is you can never leave home, so it's all right.
Maya Angelou
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Leaving behind nights of terror and fear, I rise. Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear, I rise.
Maya Angelou