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.

Everything in the universe has a rhythm, everything dances.

Try to be a rainbow in someone's cloud.

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

I like to go back and read poems that I wrote fifty years ago, twenty years ago, and sometimes they surprise me -- I didn't know I knew that then. Or maybe I didn't know it then, and I know more now.

Don't get older just to get wiser. If you get older, you will be wiser, I believe that -- if you dare. But get older because it's fun!

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.

Nature has no mercy at all. Nature says, I'm going to snow. If you have on a bikini and no snowshoes, that's tough. I am going to snow anyway.

Nothing hurts more than realizing they meant everything to you, but you meant nothing to them.

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

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.

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

Late October
Carefully
the leaves of autumn
sprinkle down the tinny
sound of little dyings
and skies sated
of ruddy sunsets
of roseate dawns
roil ceaselessly in
cobweb greys and turn
to black
for comfort.
Only lovers
see the fall
a signal end to endings
a gruffish gesture alerting
those who will not be alarmed
that we begin to stop
in order to begin
again.

I love the song 'I Hope You Dance' by Lee Ann Womack. I was going to write that song, but someone beat me to 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.