Maya Angelou Poetry Quotes & Sayings

What meals I had in silence and embarrassment, always feeling that there were a knife and fork too many, and that mine; an appetite too many, and that mine; a plate and chair too many, and those mine; a somebody too many, and that I! — Charles Dickens

I couldn't tell fact from fiction,
Or if the dream was true
My only sure prediction
In this world was you.
I'd touch your features inchly. Beard love and dared the cost, The sented spiel reeled me unreal And I found my senses lost. — Maya Angelou

I'm happy to be a writer - of prose, poetry, every kind of writing. Every person in the world who isn't a recluse, hermit or mute uses words. I know of no other art form that we always use. — Maya Angelou

I've always written. There's a journal which I kept from about 9 years old. The man who gave it to me lived across the street from the store and kept it when my grandmother's papers were destroyed. I'd written some essays. I loved poetry, still do. But I really, really loved it then. — Maya Angelou

Soft you day, be velvet soft,
My true love approaches,
Look you bright, you dusty sun,
Array your golden coaches.
Soft you wind, be soft as silk
My true love is speaking.
Hold you birds, your silver throats,
His golden voice I'm seeking.
Come you death, in haste, do come
My shroud of black be weaving,
Quiet my heart, be deathly quiet,
My true love is leaving. — Maya Angelou

I have a secret project which adds four hours every day to the 24 hours we have. There's a bit of time travel involved. — Sundar Pichai

I had read a Tale of Two Cities and found it up to my standards as a romantic novel. She opened the first page and I heard poetry for the first time in my life ... her voice slid in and curved down trough and over the words. She was nearly singing. — Maya Angelou

In all my work, in the movies I write, the lyrics, the poetry, the prose, the essays, I am saying that we may encounter many defeats - maybe it's imperative that we encounter the defeats - but we are much stronger than we appear to be and maybe much better than we allow ourselves to be. Human beings are more alike than unalike. — Maya Angelou

I find in my poetry and prose the rhythms and imagery of the best - I mean, when I'm at my best - of the good Southern black preachers. The lyricism of the spirituals and the directness of gospel songs and the mystery of blues are in my music or in my poetry and prose, or I missed everything. — Maya Angelou

Poetry and music are the best at the highest level of the human mind. Out of poetry, out of their need for poetry, human beings have developed the idea of God. And so when we sing, when we dance, when we speak poetry we are speaking out of God's mouth, each other out of the music from God's heart. — Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou entered our lives at Virago in 1984, when we first published I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. "Entered our lives" is too tame. She danced, sang, and laughed her way straight into our hearts. She brought us a best-seller, but more than that, she brought us a reminder that the human need for dignity and recognition is a gift easily given to one another, but also frighteningly easy to withhold. — Lennie Goodings

Human beings love poetry. They don't even know it sometimes ... whether they're the songs of Bono, or the songs of Justin Bieber ... they're listening to poetry. — Maya Angelou

America's liberal arts universities have long been safe zones for leftist thinking, protected ivory towers for the pseudo-elite who earn their livings writing papers nobody reads about gender roles in the poetry of Maya Angelou. — Ben Shapiro

You must understand that when you are writing a novel you are not making anything up. It's all there and you just have to find it. — Thomas Harris

A Conceit
Give me your hand
Make room for me
to lead and follow
you
beyond this rage of poetry.
Let others have
the privacy of
touching words
and love of loss
of love.
For me
Give me your hand. — Maya Angelou

Poetry is music written for the human voice. — Maya Angelou

Poetry puts starch in your backbone so you can stand, so you can compose your life. — Maya Angelou

Poetry gave me back my voice. — Maya Angelou

Most people put money in their piggy bank. I buy a goose that lays golden eggs over and over again. That's what an asset is. — Robert Kiyosaki

I know some people might think it odd - unworthy even - for me to have written a cookbook, but I make no apologies. The U.S. poet laureate Billy Collins thought I had demeaned myself by writing poetry for Hallmark Cards, but I am the people's poet so I write for the people. — Maya Angelou

So live real good, and get beat up real bad. Dance until they kill you, and then we'll dance some more. That's how this thing seems to work. — Shane Claiborne

I was always yours to have.
You were always mine.
We have loved each other in and out of time. — Maya Angelou

There are no heroes, and she remembered what Lord Petyr had said to her, here in this very hall. "Life is not a song, sweetling," he'd told her. "You may learn that one day to your sorrow." In life, the monsters win, she told herself, and now it was the Hound's voice she heard, a cold rasp, metal on stone. — George R R Martin

Because if you don't know someone all that well, you react to their surface qualities, the superficial stereotypes-they throw off like sparks. But once you fight through the sparks and get to the person, you find just that, a person, a big jumble of likes, dislikes, fears, and desires. — Dorothy West

That you are misserable and full demons and angry don't make the others like you... It's your problem, as for me I want to continue to be positive! — Deyth Banger

Makeup can give you the confidence to ... change your job, move abroad, get a pay raise. — Charlotte Tilbury

Poetry is music for the human voice. Until you actually speak it or someone speaks it, it has not come into its own. — Maya Angelou

The poetry you read has been written for you, each of you - black, white, Hispanic, man, woman, gay, straight. — Maya Angelou

At present every coachman and every waiter argues about whether or not the relativity theory is correct. — Albert Einstein

Poetry helps my soul escape its encasement. — Maya Angelou

I liked to write from the time I was about 12 or 13. I loved to read. And since I only spoke to my brother, I would write down my thoughts. And I think I wrote some of the worst poetry west of the Rockies. But by the time I was in my 20s, I found myself writing little essays and more poetry - writing at writing. — Maya Angelou

I wrote some of the worst poetry west from the Mississippi River, but I wrote. And I finally sometimes got it right. — Maya Angelou

Cotton rows crisscross the world
And dead-tired nights of yearning
Thunderbolts on leather strops
And all my body burning
Sugar cane reach up to God
And every baby crying
Shame a blanket of my night
And all my days are dying — Maya Angelou

I've always thought that was the lamest argument - that we need some people to be poor in order to remind the rest of us to be grateful. All that really means is that someone has to suffer poverty so other people can feel better about themselves. What a selfish way to look at the world. — Josephine Angelini

Have you ever walked along a beach? You walk towards something in the distance. For the longest while it never seems to get any closer even though you are walking and walking. Then all of a sudden, you are there. You've arrived at last. That's what grief is like. Meanwhile we are running with you in the spray of the surf at the edge of the shore where the sand meets the sea. We are cheering you on. — Kate McGahan