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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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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
Mean
Somebody
Never
Times
Think
Idea
Commissioned
Thinking
Comes
Poems
Ideas
Satisfied
Live
Totally
Come
Close
Without
Outside

More quotes by Maya Angelou

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Nothing succeeds like success. Get a little success, and then just get a little more.
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Politicians must set their aims for the high ground and according to our various leanings, Democratic, Republican, Independent, we will follow. Politicians must be told if they continue to sink into the mud of obscenity, they will proceed alone.
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When it looks like the sun isn't going to shine any more, God puts a rainbow in the clouds. Each one of us has the possibility, the responsibility, the probability to be the rainbow in the clouds.
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The woman who survives intact and happy must be at once tender and tough.
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Y’all dropped the ball and you should be shamed.
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It's very hard for adults to maintain respect and romance so that a love affair can be sustained over years.
Maya Angelou
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When I forgive other people, I let them go, I free them from my ignorance. And as soon as I do, I feel lighter, brighter and better.
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Life is going to give you just what you put in it. Put your whole heart in everything you do, and pray, then you can wait.
Maya Angelou
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It's true. I can do anything and do it well because God loves me. It still humbles me.
Maya Angelou
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The idea is to write it so that people hear it and it slides through the brain and goes straight to the heart.
Maya Angelou
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You are the sum total of everything you've seen, heard, eaten, smelled, been told, forgot- it's all right there.
Maya Angelou
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Nobody can enjoy unless we all enjoy, truly enjoy.
Maya Angelou
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You can't use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.
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.
Maya Angelou
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There is an intimate laughter to be found only among friends
Maya Angelou
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If we all hold on to the mistake, we can't see our own glory in the mirror because we have the mistake between our faces and the mirror we can't see what we're capable of being. You can ask forgiveness of others, but in the end the real forgiveness is in one's own self.
Maya Angelou
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I'm working at trying to be a Christian, and that's serious business. It's like trying to be a good Jew, a good Muslim, a good Buddhist, a good Shintoist, a good Zoroastrian, a good friend, a good lover, a good mother, a good buddy: it's serious business.
Maya Angelou
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Courage allows the successful woman to fail - and to learn powerful lessons from the failure - so that in the end, she didn't fail at all.
Maya Angelou
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I'm a descendant of someone bought and sold, and brought in 1619 in what was to become the United States.
Maya Angelou
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Courage, I don't think anybody is born with courage. I think you may be born with a flair to braggadocio, you know. That's not courage.
Maya Angelou