Maya Angelou Book Of Quotes & Sayings

I know why the caged bird sings. — Maya Angelou

Time had ceased to feel linear. She looked up through the crisscrossing branches, thick with buds, into the night sky. The stars tugged at her gaze, trying to pull her up among them, or she was pulling them down to her. She was on the verge of some great discovery, she realized, but she had no idea what it was, what it related to, whether it even had anything to do with her at all. Was she a participant, or an observer? Did the world center around her, or could it carry on quite easily without her input? Looking up at those stars, feeling the embrace of their light as it enfolded her, she felt both small and large, as though everything mattered and nothing did. When someone crouched down beside her it took years for her to turn her head to see who it was. All she could make out was a dark shape, a vague outline of head and shoulders silhouetted against the stars, the rest of the body lost in the shadows of the rose bushes. — Charles De Lint

I've not got a first in philosophy without being able to muddy things pretty satisfactory. — John Banham

The entire Habitat family mourns the loss of our founder, a true giant in the affordable housing movement. Our prayers are with the entire Fuller family. — Jonathan Reckford

Drunk people run stop signs, high people wait for them to turn green — Layzie Bone

Of course, there are those critics - New York critics as a rule - who say, 'Well, Maya Angelou has a new book out and of course it's good but then she's a natural writer.' Those are the ones I want to grab by the throat and wrestle to the floor because it takes me forever to get it to sing. I work at the language. — Maya Angelou

I wanted to choose somewhere public, because I was scared of the KGB. — Mathias Rust

He spent the next ten minutes giving a speech about the great day that is the day of their Surrender, and I can't be bothered to remember it all (it went on for nine minutes too long, if you ask me), but suffice it to say that it was a heart-warming speech that excited the crowd and sent jitters up Alice's skirts; and anyway, I hope you don't mind but I'd like to skip ahead to the part where things actually happen. — Tahereh Mafi

Each time I write a book, every time I face that yellow pad, the challenge is so great. I have written eleven books, but each time I think, 'Uh oh, they're going to find out now. I've run a game on everybody and they're going to find me out. — Maya Angelou

This book has been written to examine some of the ways love heals and helps a person to climb impossible heights and rise from immeasurable depths. — Maya Angelou

Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him. — Maya Angelou

By protracting life, we do not deduct one jot from the duration of death. — Lucretius

Whenever I want to laugh, I read a wonderful book, 'Children's Letters to God.' You can open it anywhere. One I read recently said, 'Dear God, thank you for the baby brother, but what I prayed for was a puppy.' — Maya Angelou

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. — Maya Angelou

I read everything. I'll read a John Grisham novel, I'll sit and read a whole book of poems by Maya Angelou, or I'll just read some Mary Oliver - this is a book that was given to me for Christmas. No particular genre. And I read in French, and I read in German, and I read in English. I love to see how other people use language. — Jessye Norman

I thought that if lokas existed at all, good women would surely go to one where men were not allowed so that they could be finally free of male demands. — Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

That kind of thinking [that writers must alleviate their guilt for leading a creative life] is based on the idea that the creative life is somehow self-indulgent. Artists and writers have to understand and live the truth that what we are doing is nourishing the world. William Carlos Williams said, "It is difficult to get the news from poems yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there." You can't eat a book, right, but books have saved my life more often than sandwiches. And they've saved your life ... But we don't say, oh, Maya Angelou should have silenced herself because other people have other destinies. It's interesting, because artists are always encouraged to feel guilty about their work. Why? Why don't we ask predatory bankers how they alleviate their guilt? — Ariel Gore

Won't it be wonderful when black history and native American history and Jewish history and all of U.S. history is taught from one book. Just U.S. history. — Maya Angelou

Being behind the lens gives me a completely different perspective, and because of my blog, I get to do projects and attend shows lending me another angle. — Hanneli Mustaparta

It's so tedious writing cookbooks or writing the recipes because I've never been much of a measurer. But to write a book, you have to measure everything. — Maya Angelou

And Gray ... Gray was finished. Done for. Completely and hopelessly lost in the softest, most tender embrace he'd ever known. He held her face in his hands, brushing light kisses over her lips. Kissing her slowly, carefully, as though he were only just learning about kissing-because he was. Not learning how to kiss, but learning why to kiss. Not in persuasion, not as a prelude to further liberties. Simply to discover the taste of her, delicate and fresh and exquisitely sweet. To tell her things he didn't dare express in words. To tell her things he had no words to express. He kissed her for no greater pleasure than to kiss, because at that moment, kissing her felt like the greatest pleasure imaginable.
He pressed his lips to her cheeks, her brow, her eyelids, her hair, interspersing his kisses with little endearments in every language he knew. Then, eyes closed, he rested his forehead against hers and waited. Leaving the choice to her. — Tessa Dare

I would welcome a friendship with Lynne Hinton. I would welcome an invitation to sit down at her table, but mostly I would welcome her next book. — Maya Angelou

Spirituality is natural, personal, and rooted in direct experience. There is no such thing as secondhand spirituality. No one else's spirituality can serve as substitute for your own. — David Cowan

of the ancient cities of Greece and — Philippa Gregory