Maya Angelou

I believe we are still so innocent. The species are still so innocent that a person who is apt to be murdered believes that the murderer, just before he puts the final wrench on his throat, will have enough compassion to give him one sweet cup of water.

Maya Angelou

I certainly do not adore the writer’s discipline. I have lost lovers, endangered friendships, and blundered into eccentricity, impelled by a concentration which usually is to be found only in the minds of people about to be executed in the next half hour.

Maya Angelou

I come as one, but stand as 10,000.

Maya Angelou

I created myself. I have taught myself so much.

Maya Angelou

I did get knocked down flat in front of the whole world, and I rose. I didn’t run away – I rose right where I’d been knocked down. And then that’s how you get to know yourself. You say, hmm, I can get up!

Maya Angelou

I did work in a strip club, but I didn’t strip. I danced, and I became very popular.

Maya Angelou

I do like to have guns around. I don’t like to carry them. But I like – if somebody is going to come into my house and I have not put out the welcome mat, I want to stop them.

Maya Angelou

I do not think of myself as unusually creative. I think we all come from the creator, each human being streaming with the glory. So each one of us is creative.

Maya Angelou

I do not trust people who don’t love themselves and yet tell me, ‘I love you.’ There is an African saying which is: Be careful when a naked person offers you a shirt.

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