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I've had people explain to me what one of my poems meant, and I've been surprised that it means that to them. If a person can use a poem of mine to interpret her life or his life, good. I can't control that. Nor would I want to.
Maya Angelou
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Maya Angelou
Age: 86 †
Born: 1928
Born: April 4
Died: 2014
Died: May 28
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St. Louis
Missouri
Marguerite Annie Johnson
Marguerite Johnson
Marguerite Ann Johnson
Marguerite Anne Johnson
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More quotes by Maya Angelou
The main thing in one's own private world is to try to laugh as much as you cry.
Maya Angelou
I've tried to be totally present, so that when I'm finished with a piece of work, I'm finished. ... The work, once completed, does not need me. The work I'm working on needs my total concentration. The one that's finished doesn't belong to me anymore. It belongs to itself.
Maya Angelou
I speak a number of languages, but none are more beautiful to me than English.
Maya Angelou
People don't always remember what you say or even what you do, but they always remember how you make them feel.
Maya Angelou
You can't get too high for somebody to bring you down.
Maya Angelou
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
I'm convinced that I'm a child of God. That's wonderful, exhilarating, liberating, full of promise. But the burden which goes along with that is, I'm convinced that everybody is a child of God. . . . I weep a lot. I thank God I laugh a lot, too. The main thing in one's own private world is to try to laugh as much as you cry.
Maya Angelou
Always in the black spirituals there's that promise that things are going to be better, by and by.
Maya Angelou
Intelligence is a separate gift, for the benefit of students, so that they may think of themselves as intellectual and not very intelligent, or intelligent and not very intellectual. One hopes, of course, that they try to bring the two virtues, the two elements, into their lives at the same time.
Maya Angelou
I think I know that I deserve better. And so I try for better. I'm never so put off that I would ever walk out of a place not having tried the best I could.
Maya Angelou
I do like to have guns around. I don't like to carry them. But I like - if somebody is going to come into my house and I have not put out the welcome mat, I want to stop them.
Maya Angelou
We can be better, we can be wiser, we can be more kind. Yes we have to change. We have to grow up and stop acting like 10 years old. Yes there is much to do, much to see, much to go into.
Maya Angelou
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.
Maya Angelou
If I'm going to a new country, I try to learn something about the language and the culture, so I don't just go bumbling over things.
Maya Angelou
I love the melodies in the Old Testament, how preachers highlight them when they read from the Scripture. But I was influenced forever by the New Testament. I love the Beatitudes, informing us that the meek shall inherit the earth.
Maya Angelou
Y’all dropped the ball and you should be shamed.
Maya Angelou
Have enough courage to trust love one more time and always one more time.
Maya Angelou
Some of us are timid. We think we have something to lose so we don't try for that next hill.
Maya Angelou
I think we ought to give ourselves more time. We should be more patient with ourselves and with each other.
Maya Angelou
I've learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way (s)he handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights.
Maya Angelou
