If I am not good to myself, how can I expect anyone else to be good to me?
Maya AngelouRead
I agree with Balzac and 19th-century writers, black and white, who say, 'I write for money.' Yes, I think everybody should be paid handsomely; I insist on it, and I pay people who work for me, or with me, handsomely.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes the importance of being compensated fairly for creative work.
Maya Angelou acknowledges that writers and artists deserve to be paid well for their contributions, expressing a belief that everyone should be financially rewarded for their labor in the creative fields. This perspective highlights the economic value of artistic work and the ethics of supporting creatives financially.
Themes
PaymentArtCreativityFair CompensationWriting
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about the value of creative work at a writers' conference.
More from Maya Angelou
All quotes βI 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 commensurate speed.
Maya AngelouRead
The white American man makes the white American woman maybe not superfluous but just a little kind of decoration. Not really important to turning around the wheels of the state. Well the black American woman has never been able to feel that way. No black American man at any time in our history in the United States has been able to feel that he didn't need that black woman right against him, shoulder to shoulder-in that cotton field, on the auction block, in the ghetto, wherever.
Maya AngelouRead
I dreamt we walked together along the shore. We made satisfying small talk and laughed. This morning I found sand in my shoe and a seashell in my pocket. Was I only dreaming?
Maya AngelouRead
I know that I'm not the easiest person to live with. The challenge I put on myself is so great that the person I live with feels himself challenged. I bring a lot to bear, and I don't know how not to.
Maya AngelouRead
I think Clinton, after getting into office and into Washington, was shocked at being bludgeoned. So he spent time trying to be all things to all people - one way guaranteed not to be successful or respected in a lion's den. You can't just play around with all those big cats - you've got to take somebody on.
Maya AngelouRead
Similar quotes
It is wrong if nearly every time we hear a black or Asian actor portraying their lives they are actually speaking the words of someone who has never experienced their reality. And to effectively silence disabled people from telling their own truth on film or TV is close to criminal and will not help wider society understand their reality.
Lenny HenryRead
All my life I have been acutely aware of a contradiction in the very nature of my existence. For forty-five years I struggled to resolve this dilemma by writing plays and novels. The more I wrote, the more I realized mere words were not enough. So I found another form of expression.
Yukio MishimaRead
The picture is not made by the photographer, the picture is more good or less good in function of the relationship that you have with the people you photograph.
Sebastiao SalgadoRead
Now architecture consists of order, which in Greek is called taxis ... Order is the balanced adjustment of the details of the work separately, and, as to the whole, the arrangement of the proportion with a view to a symmetrical result.
Marcus Vitruvius PollioRead
My paintings are not about what is seen. They are about what is known forever in the mind.
Agnes MartinRead
The arts, instead of quaking along the periphery of our policy concerns, must push boldly into the core of policy. The arts are a response to our individuality and our nature and help to shape our identity. The arts are not a frill and should not be treated as such. They have the potential to become the driving force for healing division and divisiveness.
Barbara JordanRead