Maya Angelou

Love builds up the broken wall and straightens the crooked path. Love keeps the stars in the firmament and imposes rhythm on the ocean tides. Each of us is created of it and I suspect each of us was created for it.

In so many ways, segregation shaped me, and education liberated me.

Tell the truth and not the facts.

Until blacks and whites see each other as brother and sister, we will not have parity. It's very clear.

Yet it is only love which sets us free.

The thing to do, it seems to me, is to prepare yourself so you can be a rainbow in somebody else's cloud. Somebody who may not look like you. May not call God the same name you call God - if they call God at all. I may not dance your dances or speak your language. But be a blessing to somebody. That's what I think.

Whatever you want to do, if you want to be great at it, you have to love it and be able to make sacrifices for it.

My greatest blessing has been the birth of my son. My next greatest blessing has been my ability to turn people into children of mine.

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.

Elimination of illiteracy is as serious an issue to our history as the abolition of slavery.

All great artists draw from the same resource: the human heart, which tells us that we are all more alike than we are unalike.

While the rest of the world has been improving technology, Ghana has been improving the quality of man's humanity to man.

Most plain girls are virtuous because of the scarcity of opportunity to be otherwise.

I work very hard, and I play very hard. I'm grateful for life. And I live it - I believe life loves the liver of it. I live it.

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

At fifteen life had taught me undeniably that surrender, in its place, was as honorable as resistance, especially if one had no choice.

I believe that every person is born with talent.

I want to write so well that a person is 30 or 40 pages in a book of mine ... before she realizes she's reading.

I'm convinced of this: Good done anywhere is good done everywhere.

We have it in us to be splendid.

There is nothing so pitiful as a young cynic because he has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing.