Maya Angelou
Maya Angelou
Maya Angelouwas an American poet, memoirist, and civil rights activist. She published seven autobiographies, three books of essays, several books of poetry, and was credited with a list of plays, movies, and television shows spanning over 50 years. She received dozens of awards and more than 50 honorary degrees. Angelou is best known for her series of seven autobiographies, which focus on her childhood and early adult experiences. The first, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, tells of her...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth4 April 1928
CitySt. Louis, MO
CountryUnited States of America
Without defeats, how do you really know who the hell you are? If you never had to stand up to something - to get up, to be knocked down, and to get up again - life can walk over you wearing football cleats. But each time you do get up, you're bigger, taller, finer, more beautiful, more kind, more understanding, more loving. Each time you get up, you're more inclusive. More people can stand under your umbrella.
Reality has changed chameleonlike before my eyes so many times that I have learned, or am learning, to trust almost anything except what appears to be so.
I refuse to allow any man-made differences to separate me from any other human beings.
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.
At our best, we're all teachers
It is the worst thing you can do, women, is whine, .. I mean the worst. Don't complain, protest.
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.
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.
In an unfamiliar culture, it is wise to offer no innovations, no suggestions, or lessons.
We need language to tell us who we are, how we feel, what we're capable of- to explain the pains and glory of our existence.
Each of us has the power and responsibility to become a rainbow in the clouds.
The breezes of the West African night were intimate and shy, licking the hair, sweeping through cotton dresses with unseemly intimacy, then disappearing into the utter blackness.
There's racism and sexism and ageism and all sorts of idiocies. But bad news is not news. We've had bad news as a species for a long time. We've had slavery and human sacrifice and the holocaust and brutalities of such measure.
One of the saddest things in the world is to see a cynical young person.