Maya Angelou Life Changing Quotations

The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.

I learned a long time ago the wisest thing I can do is be on my own side, be an advocate for myself and others like me.

Hold those things that tell your history and protect them. During slavery, who was able to read or write or keep anything? The ability to have somebody to tell your story to is so important. It says: 'I was here. I may be sold tomorrow. But you know I was here.'

If more Africans had eaten missionaries, the continent would be in better shape

I might have it at six-fifteen a.m. just as soon as I get in, but usually it's about eleven o'clock when I'll have a glass of sherry.

When asked how she knows when her writing is where she wants it to be: "I know when it's the best I can do. It may not be the best there is. Another writer may do it much better. But I know when it's the best I can do. I know that one of the great arts that the writer develops is the art of saying, 'No. No, I'm finished. Bye.' And leaving it alone. I will not write it into the ground. I will not write the life out of it. I won't do that."

I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better.

The main thing in one's own private world is to try to laugh as much as you cry.

And when great souls die, after a period peace blooms, slowly and always irregularly. Spaces fill with a kind of soothing electric vibration. Our senses, restored, never to be the same, whisper to us. They existed. They existed. We can be. Be and be better. For they existed.

My wish for you is that you continue. Continue to be who and how you are, to astonish a mean world with your acts of kindness.