“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.”
0 likes
Author detail
Maya Angelou (born Marguerite Annie Johnson) was an American poet, memoirist, and civil rights activist. She published seven autobiographies, three books of essays, and 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. She became a poet and writer after a series of occupations as a young adult, including fry cook, prostitute, nightclub dancer and performer, cast member of the opera Porgy and Bess, coordinator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and journalist in Egypt and Ghana during the decolonization of Africa. She was an actor, writer, director, and producer of plays, movies, and public television programs. In 1982, she earned the first lifetime Reynolds Professorship of American Studies at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. She was active in the Civil Rights movement, and worked with Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X. Source: Wikipedia
Quotes
Showing 101-120 of 324
“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.”
0 likes
“As far as I knew white women were never lonely, except in books. White men adored them, Black men desired them and Black women worked for them.”
0 likes
“Every December, I host a tree-trimming party. I serve chili with cornbread and lots of good wine. It's a wonderful party, and it shows how much adults like to play.”
0 likes
“My mom was a terrible parent of young children. And thank God - I thank God every time I think of it - I was sent to my paternal grandmother. Ah, but my mother was a great parent of a young...”
0 likes
“I learned a long time ago the wisest thing I can do is be on my own side, be an advocate for myself and others like me.”
0 likes
“Modesty is a learned affectation. And as soon as life slams the modest person against the wall, that modesty drops.”
0 likes
“I'm a religious woman. And I feel I have responsibility. I have no modesty at all. I'm even afraid of it - it's a learned affectation and it's just stuck on me like decals. Now I pray for hu...”
0 likes
“I promised myself that I would write as well as I can, tell the truth, not to tell everything I know, but to make sure that everything I tell is true, as I understand it. And to use the eloq...”
0 likes
“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 pre...”
0 likes
“I've still not written as well as I want to. I want to write so that the reader in Des Moines, Iowa, in Kowloon, China, in Cape Town, South Africa, can say, 'You know, that's the truth. I wa...”
0 likes
“I think music is one of the hero/sheroes of the African-American existence.”
0 likes
“I could fall in love with a sumo wrestler if he told stories and made me laugh. Obviously, it would be easier if someone was African-American and lived next door and went to the same church....”
0 likes
“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 an...”
0 likes
“History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.”
0 likes
“The most important thing I can tell you about aging is this: If you really feel that you want to have an off-the-shoulder blouse and some big beads and thong sandals and a dirndl skirt and a...”
0 likes
“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”
0 likes
“I agree with Balzac and 19th-century writers, black and white, who say, 'I write for money.' Yes, I think everybody should be paid handsomely; I insist on it, and I pay people who work for m...”
0 likes
“It's still scary every time I go back to the past. Each morning, my heart catches. When I get there, I remember how the light was, where the draft was coming from, what odors were in the air...”
0 likes
“It is impossible to struggle for civil rights, equal rights for blacks, without including whites. Because equal rights, fair play, justice, are all like the air: we all have it, or none of u...”
0 likes
“We can learn to see each other and see ourselves in each other and recognize that human beings are more alike than we are unalike.”
0 likes