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Not everything you do is going to be a masterpiece, but you get art there and you try and sometimes it really happens. The other times you’re just stretching your soul.

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
Sometimes
Trying
Stretching
Going
Masterpiece
Really
Times
Art
Happens
Soul
Everything

More quotes by Maya Angelou

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I think all poems are commissioned. They just come to me without somebody outside commissioning them. The idea comes and I will live with them 'til I get it as close to what I mean. I've never been totally satisfied. I've come close a few times.
Maya Angelou
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I know some people might think it odd - unworthy even - for me to have written a cookbook, but I make no apologies. The U.S. poet laureate Billy Collins thought I had demeaned myself by writing poetry for Hallmark Cards, but I am the people's poet so I write for the people.
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History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.
Maya Angelou
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We will sometimes have defeats in life but you can have defeats without being defeated, you could fail without being a failure. When you see failure and defeats as merely part of the process to get to when.
Maya Angelou
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The poetry you read has been written for you, each of you - black, white, Hispanic, man, woman, gay, straight.
Maya Angelou
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I encourage courtesy. To accept nothing less than courtesy, and to give nothing less than courtesy.
Maya Angelou
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You alone are enough. You have nothing to prove to anybody.
Maya Angelou
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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
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I think the more we know the better we are. I mean not just facts. The more we know about each other, the closer we are to learn something about our selves.
Maya Angelou
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I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.
Maya Angelou
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Yet it is only love which sets us free.
Maya Angelou
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The black kids, the poor white kids, Spanish-speaking kids, and Asian kids in the US - in the face of everything to the contrary, they still bop and bump, shout and go to school somehow. Their optimism gives me hope.
Maya Angelou
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The country didn't get that way in a week we've had years and years of getting behind in our economy. So President [Barack] Obama stepped into a hellhole and people wanted him to change it as soon as he came in. But he's got his adversaries to deal with in the House and Senate, so it's not easy.
Maya Angelou
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It is the worst thing you can do, women, is whine, .. I mean the worst. Don't complain, protest.
Maya Angelou
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I have need of a friend. There is one and only one who will give the air from his failing lungs for my body's mend. And that one is my love.
Maya Angelou
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I want to be a good human being. I'm doing my best, and I'm working at it.
Maya Angelou
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I will write on the pages of history what I want them to say. I will be myself. I will speak my own name.
Maya Angelou
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People have to feel needed. Frequently, we just offer a job and 'perks.' We don't always offer people a purpose. When people feel there is a purpose and that they're needed, there's not much else to do except let them do the work.
Maya Angelou
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Does my sexiness upset you? Does it come as a surprise That I dance like I've got diamonds At the meeting of my thighs?
Maya Angelou
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I believed that there was a God because I was told it by my grandmother and later by other adults. But when I found that I knew not only that there was God but that I was a child of God, when I understood that, when I comprehended that, more than that, when I internalized that, ingested that, I became courageous.
Maya Angelou