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There Are Great Parents Of Small Children - They Keep Their Little Hair In Bows - But Those Parents Are Not Always Good Parents Of Young Adults. As Soon As Their Children Get Up To Some Size, It's "shut Up, Sit Down, You Talk Too Much, Keep Your Distance, I'll Send You To Europe!" My Mom Was A Terrible Parent Of Small Children But A Great Parent Of Young Adults. She'd Talk To Me As If I Had Some Sense.

-Maya Angelou

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There Are Great Parents

Maya Angelou

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There Are Great Parents Of Small Children - They Keep Their Little Hair In Bows - But Those Parents Are Not Always Good Parents Of Young Adults. As Soon As Their Children Get Up To Some Size, It's "shut Up, Sit Down, You Talk Too Much, Keep Your Distance, I'll Send You To Europe!" My Mom Was A Terrible Parent Of Small Children But A Great Parent Of Young Adults. She'd Talk To Me As If I Had Some Sense.

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To Take A Few Nouns, And A Few Pronouns, And Adverbs And Adjectives, And Put Them Together, Ball Them Up, And Throw Them Against The Wall To Make Them Bounce. That's What Norman Mailer Did. That's What James Baldwin Did, And Joan Didion Did, And That's What I Do - That's What I Mean To Do.

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All Of Childhood's Unanswered Questions Must Finally Be Passed Back To The Town And Answered There. Heroes And Bogey Men, Values And Dislikes, Are First Encountered And Labeled In That Early Environment. In Later Years They Change Faces, Places And Maybe Races, Tactics, Intensities And Goals, But Beneath Those Penetrable Masks They Wear Forever The Stocking-capped Faces Of Childhood.

It's Very Hard For Adults To Maintain Respect And Romance So That A Love Affair Can Be Sustained Over Years.

When A Person Is Going Through Hell, And She Encounters Someone Who Went Through Hellish Hell And Survived, Then She Can Say, 'mine Is Not So Bad As All That. She Came Through, And So Can I.'

Perhaps Travel Cannot Prevent Bigotry, But By Demonstrating That All Peoples Cry, Laugh, Eat, Worry, And Die, It Can Introduce The Idea That If We Try And Understand Each Other, We May Even Become Friends.

One Must Know Not Just How To Accept A Gift, But With What Grace To Share It.

My Heart Is So Heavy When I See The Reality Of The Indian Reservation And As An American, I Know I Am, Too, Responsible.

It's Still Scary Every Time I Go Back To The Past. Each Morning, My Heart Catches. When I Get There, I Remember How The Light Was, Where The Draft Was Coming From, What Odors Were In The Air. When I Write, I Get All The Weeping Out.

I've Lived Many Places On The Planet, And I Still Have Friends In Many Places.

Don't Trust People Who Don't Laugh. I Don't.

I've Lived Many Places On The Planet, And I Still Have Friends In Many Places.

One Isn't Born With Courage. One Develops It By Doing Small Courageous Things.

When I Passed Forty I Dropped Pretense, 'cause Men Like Women Who Got Some Sense.

Love Liberates. It Doesn't Just Hold - That's Ego. Love Liberates. It Doesn't Bind.

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.

The Intensity With Which Young People Live Demands That They "blank Out" As Often As Possible.

We Can Learn To See Each Other And See Ourselves In Each Other And Recognize That Human Beings Are More Alike Than We Are Unalike.

Everything In The Universe Has A Rhythm, Everything Dances.

Whenever Something Went Wrong When I Was Young - If I Had A Pimple Or If My Hair Broke - My Mom Would Say, 'sister Mine, I'm Going To Make You Some Soup.' And I Really Thought The Soup Would Make My Pimple Go Away Or My Hair Stronger.

You May Encounter Many Defeats, But You Must Not Be Defeated. In Fact, The Encountering May Be The Very Experience Which Creates The Vitality And The Power To Endure.

I Would Like To Be Known As An Intelligent Woman, A Courageous Woman, A Loving Woman, A Woman Who Teaches By Being.

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