Quote

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

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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
Need
Anymore
Needs
Piece
Completed
Work
Tried
Belongs
Pieces
Concentration
Present
Belong
Working
Total
Doesn
Totally
Doe
Finished

More quotes by Maya Angelou

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Home is that youthful region where a child is the only real living inhabitant. Parents, siblings, and neighbors are mysterious apparitions who come, go, and do strange unfathomable thing in and around the child, the region's only enfranchised citizen.
Maya Angelou
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Without willing it, I had gone from being ignorant of being ignorant to being aware of being aware. And the worst part of my awareness was that I didn't know what I was aware of. I knew I knew very little, but I was certain that the things I had yet to learn wouldn't be taught to me at George Washington High School.
Maya Angelou
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You can practice any virtue erratically, but nothing consistently without courage.
Maya Angelou
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Have enough courage to trust love one more time and always one more time.
Maya Angelou
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If you have a song to sing, who are you not to open your mouth and sing to the world?
Maya Angelou
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Facts can obscure the truth.
Maya Angelou
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Hope for the best, be prepared for the worse. Life is shocking, but you must never appear to be shocked. For no matter how bad it is it could be worse and no matter how good it is it could be better.
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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Nobody can enjoy unless we all enjoy, truly enjoy.
Maya Angelou
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Spirit is an invisible force made visible in all life.
Maya Angelou
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Just like moons and suns, With certainty of tides, Just like hopes springing high, Still I'll rise.
Maya Angelou
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By love I don't mean indulgence. I do not mean sentimentality. And in this instance, I don't even mean romance. I mean that condition that allowed humans to dream of God.That condition that allowed the dumb to write spirituals and Russian songs and Irish lilts. That is love, and it's so much larger than anything I can conceive.
Maya Angelou
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One of the problems we have as writers is we don't take ourselves seriously while writing being serious is setting aside a time and saying if it comes, good if it doesn't come, good, I'll just sit here.
Maya Angelou
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I encourage courtesy. To accept nothing less than courtesy, and to give nothing less than courtesy. If we accept being talked to any kind of a way, then we are telling ourselves we are not quite worth the best. And if we have the effrontery to talk to anybody with less than courtesy, we tell ourselves and the world we are not very intelligent.
Maya Angelou
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I am convinced that words are things, and we simply don't have the machinery to measure what they are. I believe that words are tangible things.
Maya Angelou
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Intelligence always had a pornographic influence on me.
Maya Angelou
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Let me tell so much truth. I want to tell the truth in my work. The truth will lead me to all.
Maya Angelou
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Most plain girls are virtuous because of the scarcity of opportunity to be otherwise.
Maya Angelou
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Anything that works against you can also work for you once you understand the Principle of Reverse.
Maya Angelou
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I would ask every man and every woman who's had the blessing of having children, 'Would you deny your son or your daughter the ecstasy of finding someone to love?' To love someone takes a lot of courage. So how much more is one challenged when the love is of the same sex and the laws say, 'I forbid you from loving this person'?
Maya Angelou