Maya Angelou

“It's so tedious writing cookbooks or writing the recipes because I've never been much of a measurer. But to write a book, you have to measure everything.”

“Poetry puts starch in your backbone so you can stand, so you can compose your life.”

“I did work in a strip club, but I didn't strip. I danced, and I became very popular.”

“I'm interested in women's health because I'm a woman. I'd be a darn fool not to be on my own side.”

“I'm happy to be a writer - of prose, poetry, every kind of writing. Every person in the world who isn't a recluse, hermit or mute uses words. I know of no other art form that we always use.”

“The hope, the hope that lives in the breast of the black American, is just so tremendous that it overwhelms me sometimes.”

“Self-pity in its early stage is as snug as a feather mattress. Only when it hardens does it become uncomfortable.”

“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.”

“The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.”

“Achievement brings its own anticlimax.”

“When I was 8 years old I became a mute and was a mute until I was 13, and I thought of my whole body as an ear, so I can go into a crowd and sit still and absorb all sound. That talent or ability has lasted and served me until today.”

“I am a WomanPhenomenally.Phenomenal Woman,that's me.”

“I love wisdom. And you can never be great at anything unless you love it. Not be in love with it, but love the thing, admire the thing. And it seems that if you love the thing, and you don't just want to possess it, it will find you.”

“I respect myself and insist upon it from everybody. And because I do it, I then respect everybody, too.”

“Everything in the universe has a rhythm, everything dances.”

“If we don't plant the right things, we will reap the wrong things. It goes without saying. And you don't have to be, you know, a brilliant biochemist and you don't have to have an IQ of 150. Just common sense tells you to be kind, ninny, fool. Be kind.”

“We need to develop courage, and we need to develop it in small ways first..... You develop a little courage, so that if you decide, "I will not stay in rooms where women are belittled; I will not stay in company where races, no matter who they are, are belittled; I will not take it; I will not sit around and accept dehumanising other human beings: - if you decide to do that in small ways, and you continue to do it - finally you realize you've got so much courage. Imagine it - you've got so much courage that people want to be around you. They get a feeling that they will be protected in your company.”

“If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform a million realities.”

“At one time, you could sit on the Rue de la Paix in Paris or at the Habima Theater in Tel Aviv or in Medina and you could see a person come in, black, white, it didn't matter. You said, 'That's an American' because there's a readiness to smile and to talk to people.”

“I write some country music. There's a song called 'I Hope You Dance.' Incredible. I was going to write that poem; somebody beat me to it.”