"The woman who survives intact and happy must be at once tender and tough."
Read quote
3 likes
Quote collection
Maya Angelou quotes (page 47 of 51)
1K quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Until recently each generation found it more expedient to plead guilty to the charge of being young and ignorant, easier to take the punishment meted out by the older generation (which had itself confessed to the same crime short years before). The command to grow up at once was more bearable than the faceless horror of wavering purpose, which was youth."
Read quote
3 likes
"The dread of futility has been my life-long plague."
Read quote
3 likes
"I made the decision to quit show business. Give up the skintight dresses and manicured smiles. The false concern over sentimental lyrics. I would never again work to make people smile inanely and would take on the responsibility of making them think."
Read quote
3 likes
"Then the question began to live under my blankets: How did lesbianism begin? What were the symptoms? The public library gave information on the finished lesbian--and that woefully sketchy--but on the growth of a lesbian, there was nothing. I did discover that the difference between hermaphrodites and lesbians was that hermaphrodites were "born that way." It was impossible to determine whether lesbians budded gradually, or burst into being with a suddenness that dismayed them as much as it repelled society."
Read quote
3 likes
"Even here in America, we felt the cool, refreshing breeze of freedom when Nelson Mandela took the seat of Presidency in his country where formerly he was not even allowed to vote. We were enlarged by tears of pride as we saw Nelson Mandela's former prison guards invited, courteously, by him to watch from the front rows his inauguration."
Read quote
3 likes
"By no amount of agile exercising of a wistful imagination could my mother have been called lenient. Generous she was; indulgent never. Kind, yes, permissive, never. In her world, people she accepted paddled their own canoes, pulled their own weight, put their own shoulders to their own plows and pushed like hell."
Read quote
3 likes
"You can't use up creativity, creative thinking builds on itself and increases the creativity of the thinker...You can't use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have."
Read quote
3 likes
"Y’all dropped the ball and you should be shamed."
Read quote
3 likes
"I also wear a hat or a very tightly pulled head tie when I write. I suppose I hope by doing that I will keep my brains from seeping out of my scalp and running in great gray blobs down my neck, into my ears, and over my face."
Read quote
3 likes
"I write because I am a Black woman, listening attentively to her people."
Read quote
3 likes
"I suggest that the great art belongs to all people, all the time--that indeed it is made for the people, by the people, to the people."
Read quote
3 likes
"Poetry helps my soul escape its encasement."
Read quote
3 likes
"Oh, the holiness of being the injured party."
Read quote
3 likes
"I've tried to be totally present, so that when I'm finished with a piece of work, I'm finished. ... The work, once completed, does not need me. The work I'm working on needs my total concentration. The one that's finished doesn't belong to me anymore. It belongs to itself."
Read quote
3 likes
"The music was my friend, my lover, my family."
Read quote
3 likes
"All riddles are blues, / And all blues are sad, / And I'm only mentioning / Some blues I've had."
Read quote
3 likes
"A certain person wondered why a big strong girl like me wouldn't keep a job which paid a normal salary. I took my time to lead her and to read her every page. Even minimal people can't survive on minimal wage. A certain person wondered why I wait all week for you. I didn't have the words to describe just what you do. I said you had the motion of the ocean in your walk, and when you solve my riddles you don't even have to talk."
Read quote
3 likes
"I never have written every day. When I'm writing a book, I write Monday through Friday. I always try to take Saturday and pretend to have some sanity."
Read quote
3 likes
"I get up in the morning, and I'm reluctant to turn on the television."
Read quote
3 likes