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
I'm just someone who likes cooking and for whom sharing food is a form of expression.
I make writing as much a part of my life as I do eating or listening to music.
On Saturday afternoons when all the things are done in the house and there's no real work to be done, I play Bach and Chopin and turn it up real loudly and get a good bottle of chardonnay and sit out on my deck and look out at the garden.
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.
I speak to the black experience, but I am always talking about the human condition.
I've learned that regardless of your relationship with your parents, you'll miss them when they're gone from your life.
You may shoot me with your words, you may cut me with your eyes, you may kill me with your hatefulness, but still, like air, I'll rise!
Everything in the universe has a rhythm, everything dances.
All great artists draw from the same resource: the human heart, which tells us that we are all more alike than we are unalike.
All of us knows, not what is expedient, not what is going to make us popular, not what the policy is, or the company policy - but in truth each of us knows what is the right thing to do. And that's how I am guided.
Success is loving life and daring to live it.
For Africa to me... is more than a glamorous fact. It is a historical truth. No man can know where he is going unless he knows exactly where he has been and exactly how he arrived at his present place.
Some critics will write 'Maya Angelou is a natural writer' - which is right after being a natural heart surgeon.
When younger writers and poets, musicians and painters are weakened by a stemming of funds, they come to me saddened, not as full of dreams and excitement and ideas. I am then weakened and diminished, and made less rich.