“Achievement brings its own anticlimax.”
— Maya Angelou
“If men are God’s gift to women, then God must really love gag gifts.”
“In an unfamiliar culture, it is wise to offer no innovations, no suggestions, or lessons.”
“Don’t get older just to get wiser. If you get older, you will be wiser, I believe that – if you dare. But get older because it’s fun!”
“A person is the product of their dreams. So make sure to dream great dreams. And then try to live your dream.”
“I love a Hebrew National hot dog with an ice-cold Corona – no lime. If the phone rings, I won’t answer until I’m done.”
“If growing up is painful for the Southern Black girl, being aware of her displacement is the rust on the razor that threatens the throat. It is an unnecessary insult.”
“Look what you’ve already come through! Don’t deny it. Say I’m stronger than I thought I was.”
“Money and power can liberate only if they are used to do so. They can imprison and inhibit more finally than barred windows and iron chains.”
“Love is that condition in the human spirit so profound that it allows me to survive, and better than that, to thrive with passion, compassion, and style.”
“I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself.”
“When I look back, I am so impressed again with the life-giving power of literature.”
“Don’t let anybody raise you. You’ve been raised.”
“To be left alone on the tightrope of youthful unknowing is to experience the excruciating beauty of full freedom and the threat of eternal indecision.”
“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.”
“Sometimes all you need in love is to make each other happy, to make each other laugh. So long as you can still do that ten years down the line then I think you’re gold. Never let the laughter slip from your relationship.”
“People feel guilty. And guilt is stymieing. Guilt immobilizes. Guilt closes the air ducts and the veins, and makes people ignorant.”
“I believe in living a poetic life, an art full life. Everything we do from the way we raise our children to the way we welcome our friends is part of a large canvas we are creating.”
“Independence is a heady draught, and if you drink it in your youth, it can have the same effect on the brain as young wine does. It does not matter that its taste is not always appealing. It is addictive and with each drink you want more.”
“In Stamps the segregation was so complete that most Black children didn’t really, absolutely know what whites looked like.”
“When I was asked to do something good, I often say yes, I’ll try, yes, I’ll do my best. And part of that is believing, if God loves me, if God made everything from leaves to seals and oak trees, then what is it I can’t do?”
“Continue to plant a kiss of concern on the cheek of the sick and the aged and infirm and count that actions as natural and to be expected.”
“Now, after years of observation and enough courage to admit what I have observed, I try to plant peace if I do not want discord; to plant loyalty and honesty if I want to avoid betrayal and lies.”
“In order to be profoundly dishonest, a person must have one of two qualities: either he is unscrupulously ambitious, or he is unswervingly egocentric.”
“There is a spirit in all music, the spirit has the ability to conjure up thoughts even pictures of something that happened or you wished would happen or you anticipate happening. Music has the ability to create ideas in you and me. It has the ability to encourage us to be creative.”
“When I passed forty I dropped pretense, ’cause men like women who got some sense.”
“It may in fact be utterly impossible to be successful without helping others to become successful.”
“Education is a process that goes on ’til death. The moment you see someone who knows she has found the one true way, and can call all the others false, then you know you’re in the company of an ignoramus.”
“Everything costs and costs the earth.”
“My people had used music to soothe slavery’s torment or to propitiate God, or to describe the sweetness of love and the distress of lovelessness, but I knew no race could sing and dance its way to freedom.”
“Everyone has at least one story, and each of us is funny if we admit it. You have to admit you’re the funniest person you’ve ever heard of.”
“Shelter Network’s programs and services are a rainbow in the clouds for homeless children and adults.”
“You think you may not be heard. Speak anyway.”
“Nothing hurts more than realizing they meant everything to you, but you meant nothing to them.”
“When we decide to be happy we accept the responsibility to bring happiness to someone else.”
“If I insist on being pessimistic, there is always tomorrow. Today I am blessed.”
“Black women have not historically stood in the pulpit, but that doesn’t undermine the fact that they built the churches and maintain the pulpits.”
“Blacks concede that hurrawing, jibing, jiving, signifying, disrespecting, cursing, even outright insults might be acceptable under particular conditions, but aspersions cast against one’s family call for immediate attack.”
“Be courageous, but not foolhardy. Walk proud as you are.”
“Once you appreciate one of your blessings, one of your senses, your sense of hearing, then you begin to respect the sense of seeing and touching and tasting, you learn to respect all the senses.”
“The Black female is assaulted in her tender years by all those common forces of nature at the same time she is caught in the tripartite crossfire of masculine prejudice, white illogical hate and Black lack of power.”
“It’s wonderful that whenever Patsy Cline’s name is mentioned, people’s voices fall and they become right sentimental. And, rightly so.”
“There is no place where God is not.”
“I have a feeling that I make a very good friend, and I’m a good mother, and a good sister, and a good citizen. I am involved in life itself – all of it. And I have a lot of energy and a lot of nerve.”
“The sadness of the women’s movement is that they don’t allow the necessity of love. See, I don’t personally trust any revolution where love is not allowed.”
“Creativity or talent, like electricity, is something I don’t understand but something I’m able to harness and use.”
“We must infuse our lives with art. Our national leaders must be informed that we want them to use our taxes to support street theatre in order to oppose street gangs. We should have a well-supported regional theatre in order to oppose regionalism and.”
“I don’t think modesty is a very good virtue, if it is a virtue at all. A modest person will drop the modesty in a minute. It’s a learned affectation.”
“And one of my absolute favorite quotes of all-time, one that I’ve adopted as one of my greatest life mottos: Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told: “I’m with you kid. Let’s go.””
“Tragedy, no matter how sad, becomes boring to those not caught in its addictive caress.”
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