People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.

We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated.

As long as you're breathing, it's never too late to do some good.

I can be changed by what happens to me, but I refuse to be reduced by it.

There is a very fine line between loving life and being greedy for it.

Try to be a rainbow in someone's cloud.

I like to have guns around. I don't like to carry them.

If you are always trying to be normal, you will never know how amazing you can be.

I like to speak on matters which matter to human beings, and almost everything matters to human beings.

To be allowed, no, invited into the private lives of strangers, and to share their joys and fears, was a chance to exchange the Southern bitter wormwood for a cup of mead with Beowulf or a hot cup of tea and milk with Oliver Twist.

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

Now they seemed not ready to give up the old school, the familiar paths and classrooms.

At the end of the day people won't remember what you said or did, they will remember how you made them feel.

For Africa to me... is more than a glamorous fact. It is a historical truth. No man can know where he is going unless he knows exactly where he has been and exactly how he arrived at his present place.

The heavy opulence of Dostoevsky's world was where I had lived forever. The gloomy, lightless interiors, the complex ratiocinations of the characters and their burdensome humors, were as familiar to me as loneliness.

A woman who is convinced that she deserves to accept only the best challenges herself to give the best. Then she is living phenomenally.

When I'm writing, I write. And then it's as if the muse is convinced that I'm serious and says, 'Okay. Okay. I'll come.'

One must know not just how to accept a gift, but with what grace to share it.

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.

Some critics will write 'Maya Angelou is a natural writer' -- which is right after being a natural heart surgeon.