QuoteProject
I've still not written as well as I want to. I want to write so that the reader in Des Moines, Iowa, in Kowloon, China, in Cape Town, South Africa, can say, 'You know, that's the truth. I wasn't there, and I wasn't a six-foot black girl, but that's the truth.'
Maya Angelou
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

The quote expresses the desire for universal understanding and connection through writing.

Maya Angelou emphasizes the importance of creating writing that resonates with diverse audiences, regardless of their backgrounds or experiences. She illustrates a profound aspiration for truth in literature, one that transcends geographical and cultural barriers, allowing all readers to find common ground and authenticity in shared emotions and realities.

Themes

WritingTruthUniversalConnectionAudience

In practice

Example use cases

This quote can be shared in a writing workshop to inspire authors to focus on universal themes.

More from Maya Angelou

If I am not good to myself, how can I expect anyone else to be good to me?
Maya AngelouRead
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 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

Poets are being pursued by the philosophers today, out of the poverty of philosophy. God damn it, you might think a man had no business to be writing, to be a poet unless some philosophic stinker gave him permission.
William Carlos WilliamsRead
Poetry demands a different material than prose. It uses another facet of the same fact... the spontaneous conformation of language as it is heard.
William Carlos WilliamsRead
I've never put out a song that I wasn't completely proud of and that I didn't love. In that sense, I've never felt like I sold out in any way.
John LegendRead
In a way, her strangeness, her naiveté, her craving for the other half of her equation was the consequence of an idle imagination. Had she paints, or clay, or knew the discipline of the dance, or strings, had she anything to engage her tremendous curiosity and her gift for metaphor, she might have exchanged the restlessness and preoccupation with whim for an activity that provided her with all she yearned for. And like an artist with no art form, she became dangerous.
Toni MorrisonRead
Design without discipline is anarchy, an exercise of irresponsibilit y.
Massimo VignelliRead
I always believed in the music we did and that's why it was uncompromising.
Jimmy PageRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.