Work By Maya Angelou Quotes & Sayings

Maya Angelou said, "People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." I'm proud that Mike Schur and I rejected the idea that creativity needs to come from chaos. I like how we ran our writers' room and our set. People had a great time when they came to work on our show and that mattered to us. I like to think the spirit we had on set found its way onto the show. — Amy Poehler

I did work in a strip club, but I didn't strip. I danced, and I became very popular. — Maya Angelou

I made the decision to quit show business. Give up the skintight dresses and manicured smiles. The false concern over sentimental lyrics. I would never again work to make people smile inanely and would take on the responsibility of making them think. — Maya Angelou

I do not believe that the accident of birth makes people sisters and brothers. It makes them siblings. Gives them mutuality of parentage. Sisterhood and brotherhood are conditions people have to work at. It's a serious matter. You compromise, you give, you take, you stand firm, and you're relentless ... And it is an investment. Sisterhood means if you happen to be in Burma and I happen to be in San Diego and I'm married to someone who is very jealous and you're married to somebody who is very possessive, if you call me in the middle of the night, I have to come. — Maya Angelou

I try to live what I consider a "poetic existence." That means I take responsibility for the air I breathe and the space I take up. I try to be immediate, to be totally present for all my work. — Maya Angelou

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 don't believe an accident of birth makes people sisters or brothers. It makes them siblings, gives them mutuality of parentage. Sisterhood and brotherhood is a condition people have to work at. — Maya Angelou

Don't lose what you had to get something which just may not work. — Maya Angelou

Every person needs to take one day away. A day in which one consciously separates the past from the future. Jobs, family, employers, and friends can exist one day without any one of us, and if our egos permit us to confess, they could exist eternally in our absence. Each person deserves a day away in which no problems are confronted, no solutions searched for. Each of us needs to withdraw from the cares which will not withdraw from us. — Maya Angelou

You want me to do something ... tell me I can't do it. — 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 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. — Maya Angelou

Nothing will work unless you do. — Maya Angelou

In all my work, I try to say - 'You may be given a load of sour lemons, why not try to make a dozen lemon meringue pies?' — Maya Angelou

I've tried to be totally present, so that when I'm finished with a piece of work, I'm finished ... The work, once completed, does not need me. The work I'm working on needs my total concentration. The one that's finished doesn't belong to me anymore. It belongs to itself. — Maya Angelou

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

Being a woman is hard work. — Maya Angelou

Let me tell so much truth. I want to tell the truth in my work. The truth will lead me to all. — Maya Angelou

Being free is as difficult and as perpetual - or rather fighting for one's freedom, struggling towards being free, is like struggling to be a poet or a good Christian or a good jew or a good Moslem or a good Zen Buddhist. You work all day long and achieve some kind of level of success by nightfall, go to sleep and wake up in the next morning with the job still to be done. So you start all over again. — Maya Angelou

I keep a hotel room in my town, although I have a large house. And I go there at about 5:30 in the morning, and I start working. And I don't allow anybody to come in that room. I work on yellow pads and with ballpoint pens. I keep a Bible, a thesaurus, a dictionary, and a bottle of sherry. I stay there until midday. — Maya Angelou

I work very hard, and I play very hard. I'm grateful for life. And I live it - I believe life loves the liver of it. I live it. — Maya Angelou

Rev. King continued, chanting, singing his prophetic litany. We were one people, indivisible in the sight of God, responsible to each other and for each other.
We, the black people, the most displaced, the poorest, the most maligned and scourged, we had the glorious task of reclaiming the soul and saving the honor of the country. We, the most hated, must take hate into our hands and by the miracle of love, turn loathing into love. We, the most feared and apprehensive, must take fear and by love, change it into hope. We, who die daily in large and small ways, must take the demon death and turn it into Life.
His head was thrown back and his words rolled out with the rumbling of thunder. We had to pray without ceasing and work without tiring. We had to know evil will not forever stay on the throne. That right, dashed to the ground, will rise, rise again and again. — Maya Angelou

I would be a liar, a hypocrite, or a fool - and I'm not any of those - to say that I don't write for the reader. I do. But for the reader who hears, who really will work at it, going behind what I seem to say. So I write for myself and that reader who will pay the dues. — Maya Angelou

Christians already? It seems to me that it takes a lifetime of work. — Maya Angelou

Anything that works against you can also work for you once you understand the Principle of Reverse. — Maya Angelou

Harlem Hopscotch


One foot down, then hop! It's hot.

Good things for the ones that's got.

Another jump, now to the left.

Everybody for hisself.


In the air, now both feet down.

Since you black, don't stick around.

Food is gone, the rent is due,

Curse and cry and then jump two.


All the people out of work,

Hold for three, then twist and jerk.

Cross the line, they count you out.

That's what hopping's all about.


Both feet flat, the game is done.

They think I lost. I think I won. — Maya Angelou

My great hope is to laugh as much as I cry; to get my work done and try to love somebody and have the courage to accept the love in return. — Maya Angelou

On Saturday afternoons when all the things are done in the house and there's no real work to be done, I play Bach and Chopin and turn it up real loudly and get a good bottle of chardonnay and sit out on my deck and look out at the garden. — Maya Angelou

Remember this: When you cross my doorstep, you have already been raised. With what you have learned ... you know the difference between right and wrong. Do right. Don't anybody raise you from the way you have been raised. Know you will have to make adaptations, in love, in relationships, in friends, in society, in work, but don't let anybody change your mind. — Maya Angelou

Let the brain go to work, let it meet the heart and you will be able to forgive. — Maya Angelou

My work is to be honest. My work is to try to think clearly, then have the courage to make sure that what I say is the truth. — Maya Angelou

People have to feel needed. Frequently, we just offer a job and 'perks.' We don't always offer people a purpose. When people feel there is a purpose and that they're needed, there's not much else to do except let them do the work. — Maya Angelou