Quotes from Maya Angelou

We turned other cheeks so often our heads seemed to revolve on the end of our necks, like old stop and go signs.

when someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time

If you're always trying to be normal, you'll never know how amazing you can be.

After a short labor, and without too much pain (I decided that the pain of delivery was overrated), my son was born.

In the evening, when we were alone like that, Uncle Willie didn't stutter or shake or give any indication that he had an affliction. It seemed that the peace of a day's ending was an assurance that the covenant God made with children, Negroes and the crippled was still in effect.

Momma could not take the smallest achievement for granted. People whose history and future were threatened each day by extinction considered that it was only by divine intervention that they were able to live at all. I find it interesting that the meanest life, the poorest existence, is attributed to God's will, but as human beings become more affluent, as their living standard and style begin to ascend the material scale, God descends the scale of responsibility at a commensurate speed.

Midwives and winding sheets know birthing is hard and dying is mean and living's a trial in between. Why do we journey, muttering like rumors among the stars? Is a dimension lost? Is it love?

My entire stay there might have been time lost if it hadn't been for the unique personality of a brilliant teacher. Miss Kirwin was that rare educator who was in love with information. I will always believe that her love of teaching came not so much from her liking for students but her desire to make sure that some of the things she knew would find repositories so that they could be shared again.

Sister, change everything you don't like about your life. But when you come to a thing you can't change, then change the way you think about it. You'll see it new, and maybe a new way to change it.

I think that everyone thought that the Depression like everything else, was for the white-folks, so it had nothing to do with them.

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.

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.