Maya Angelou
American poet, memoirist, civil rights activist, and one of the defining literary voices of the late twentieth century. Born in 1928 in St. Louis, she lived through years of mute silence after childhood trauma, then through dancing, singing, journalism, and revolutionary work — corresponding with Malcolm X in Ghana, working on the Selma to Montgomery March with King — before her seven-volume autobiography (beginning with I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings in 1969) made her one of the most-read American writers. She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2010, recited On the Pulse of Morning at Bill Clinton's inauguration in 1993, and produced poetry — Phenomenal Woman, Still I Rise — that has become contemporary scripture for several generations of readers. She died in 2014 in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
quotes in library
Quotes by Maya Angelou
108 quotes“All great achievements require time.”
“You cannot use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.”
“Have enough courage to trust love one more time and always one more time.”
“Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.”
“I have great respect for the past. If you don't know where you've come from, you don't know where you're going.”
“There is a need to find and sing our own song, to find truths we live by.”
“You are the sum of every dream you ever dreamed.”
“In our bodies, we hold the wisdom of generations.”
“Easy reading is damn hard writing.”
“There is more poetry in a man than in 50 women's magazines.”
“Just like moons and like suns, with the certainty of tides, just like hopes springing high, still I'll rise.”
“Out of the huts of history's shame, I rise.”
“Up from a past that's rooted in pain, I rise.”
“I am the dream and the hope of the slave.”
“I rise. I rise. I rise.”
“Have enough courage to start and enough heart to finish.”
“Most plain girls are virtuous because of the scarcity of opportunity to be otherwise.”
“You should be angry. You must not be bitter. Anger is like fire. It burns it all clean. Bitterness is the same as cancer.”
“Use anger like a force of fire to clean out the wrong.”
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