Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Good
Mine
Interpreting
Would
Poetry
Interpret
Life
Control
Poems
People
Use
Surprised
Means
Poem
Persons
Explain
Person
Meant
Mean
Mines

More quotes by Maya Angelou

Image
Remember, people will judge you by your actions not your intentions. You may have a heart of gold but so does a hard-boiled egg.
Maya Angelou
Image
We need Joy as we need air. We need Love as we need water. We need each other as we need the earth we share.
Maya Angelou
Image
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.
Maya Angelou
Image
Most people don't grow up. It's too damn difficult. What happens is most people get older.
Maya Angelou
Image
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear, I rise. Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear, I rise.
Maya Angelou
Image
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
Image
I'm grateful to intelligent people. That doesn't mean educated. That doesn't mean intellectual. I mean really intelligent. What black old people used to call 'mother wit' means intelligence that you had in your mother's womb. That's what you rely on. You know what's right to do.
Maya Angelou
Image
People are too busy putting things under microscopes and so forth. Creativity is greater than the sum of its parts.
Maya Angelou
Image
If I'm here, I'll be trying to be a better human being, a better writer, a better friend and a better beloved.
Maya Angelou
Image
Stormy or sunny days, glorious or lonely nights, I maintain an attitude of gratitude.
Maya Angelou
Image
Nothing can dim the light which shines from within.
Maya Angelou
Image
My hope is that we develop enough courage to develop courage. To try to have, try to learn to treat each other fairly, with generosity and kindness.
Maya Angelou
Image
Whenever something went wrong when I was young - if I had a pimple or if my hair broke - my mom would say, 'Sister mine, I'm going to make you some soup.' And I really thought the soup would make my pimple go away or my hair stronger.
Maya Angelou
Image
Every day offers you 10,000 reasons to cry, but if you can find just one reason to laugh then you will be all right.
Maya Angelou
Image
Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends.
Maya Angelou
Image
I had to trust life and believe that life loved the person who dared to live it.
Maya Angelou
Image
By no amount of agile exercising of a wistful imagination could my mother have been called lenient. Generous she was indulgent never. Kind, yes, permissive, never. In her world, people she accepted paddled their own canoes, pulled their own weight, put their own shoulders to their own plows and pushed like hell.
Maya Angelou
Image
I would be stupid not to be on my own side. But I'm a human being, too. And I'm on the side of human beings, rather than on the side of crocodiles.
Maya Angelou
Image
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
Image
I think we all have empathy. We may not have enough courage to display it.
Maya Angelou