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When I Am Writing, I Am Trying To Find Out Who I Am, Who We Are, What We're Capable Of, How We Feel, How We Lose And Stand Up, And Go On From Darkness Into Darkness. I'm Trying For That. But I'm Also Trying For The Language. I'm Trying To See How It Can Really Sound.

-Maya Angelou

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When I Am Writing,

Maya Angelou

...

When I Am Writing, I Am Trying To Find Out Who I Am, Who We Are, What We're Capable Of, How We Feel, How We Lose And Stand Up, And Go On From Darkness Into Darkness. I'm Trying For That. But I'm Also Trying For The Language. I'm Trying To See How It Can Really Sound.

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Without Courage We Cannot Practice Any Other Virtue With Consistency.

I Don't Trust Any Revolution Where Love Is Not Allowed.

As Long As You're Breathing, It's Never Too Late To Do Some Good.

If One Is Lucky, A Solitary Fantasy Can Totally Transform One Million Realities.

I Have Risked Everything To Tell The Truth. Tell The Truth

Telling The Truth

Without Defeats, How Do You Really Know Who The Hell You Are? If You Never Had To Stand Up To Something - To Get Up, To Be Knocked Down, And To Get Up Again - Life Can Walk Over You Wearing Football Cleats. But Each Time You Do Get Up, You're Bigger, Taller, Finer, More Beautiful, More Kind, More Understanding, More Loving. Each Time You Get Up, You're More Inclusive. More People Can Stand Under Your Umbrella.

My Mother Had Said Me, "all Right, You've Been Raised, So Don't Let Anybody Else Raise You. You Know The Difference Between Right And Wrong. Do Right. And Remember - You Can Always Come Home." And She Continued To Liberate Me Until She Died. On The Night She Died, I Went To The Hospital. I Told My Mom, "let Me Tell You About Yourself. You Deserved A Great Daughter, And You Got One. And You Liberated Me To Be One. So If It's Time For You To Go, You May Have Done Everything God Brought You Here To Do."

Tell The Truth And Not The Facts.

Telling The Truth

I Find In My Poetry And Prose The Rhythms And Imagery Of The Best - I Mean, When I'm At My Best - Of The Good Southern Black Preachers. The Lyricism Of The Spirituals And The Directness Of Gospel Songs And The Mystery Of Blues Are In My Music Or In My Poetry And Prose, Or I Missed Everything.

Look What You've Already Come Through! Don't Deny It. Say I'm Stronger Than I Thought I Was

One Isn't Necessarily Born With Courage, But One Is Born With Potential.

People Are Too Busy Putting Things Under Microscopes And So Forth. Creativity Is Greater Than The Sum Of Its Parts.

A Mother's Love Liberates.

We Love And Lose In China, We Weep On England's Moors, And Laugh And Moan In Guinea, And Thrive On Spanish Shores. We Seek Success In Finland, Are Born And Die In Maine. In Minor Ways We Differ, In Major We're The Same.

Out Of The Huts Of History's Shame I Rise.

I Had Read A Tale Of Two Cities And Found It Up To My Standards As A Romantic Novel. She Opened The First Page And I Heard Poetry For The First Time In My Life...her Voice Slid In And Curved Down Trough And Over The Words. She Was Nearly Singing.

I Am A Child Of God. I Always Carry That With Me.

I Think A Nap Or A Rest Overnight Is Great. But Who Needs Three Days Of Rest? Please! The Second Day, You Might Die.

I've Had People Explain To Me What One Of My Poems Meant, And I've Been Surprised That It Means That To Them. If A Person Can Use A Poem Of Mine To Interpret Her Life Or His Life, Good. I Can't Control That. Nor Would I Want To.

I'm Not Sure If Resilience Is Ever Achieved Alone. Experience Allows Us To Learn From Example. But If We Have Someone Who Loves Us-i Don't Mean Who Indulges Us, But Who Loves Us Enough To Be On Our Side-then It's Easier To Grow Resilience, To Grow Belief In Self, To Grow Self-esteem. And It's Self-esteem That Allows A Person To Stand Up.

Poetry Helps My Soul Escape Its Encasement.

I Believe That Every Person Is Born With Talent.

We Need Much Less Than We Think We Need.

I Find It Interesting That The Meanest Life, The Poorest Existence, Is Attributed To God's Will, But As Human Beings Become More Affluent, As Their Living Standard And Style Begin To Ascend The Material Scale, God Descends The Scale Of Responsibility At Commensurate Speed.

I Am Convinced That Words Are Things, And We Simply Don't Have The Machinery To Measure What They Are. I Believe That Words Are Tangible Things.

Whining Is Just Unbecoming.

We May Encounter Many Defeats, But We Must Not Be Defeated. It May Even Be Necessary To Encounter The Defeat So That We Can Know Who We Are. So That We Can See, "oh, That Happened, And I Rose. 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." That's How You Get To Know Yourself.

I Have A Feeling That I Make A Very Good Friend, And I'm A Good Mother, And A Good Sister, And A Good Citizen. I Am Involved In Life Itself - All Of It. And I Have A Lot Of Energy And A Lot Of Nerve.

Hope Does Not Take Away Your Problems. It Can Lift You Above Them.

I Am The Dream And The Hope Of The Slave

African American

Freedom Is Never Free.

Sometimes All You Need In Love Is To Make Each Other Happy, To Make Each Other Laugh. So Long As You Can Still Do That Ten Years Down The Line Then I Think You're Gold. Never Let The Laughter Slip From Your Relationship.

I Keep On Dying, Because I Love To Live

It Is This Belief In A Power Larger Than Myself And Other Than Myself Which Allows Me To Venture Into The Unknown And Even The Unknowable.

Nothing Can Dim The Light Which Shines From Within.

I Believe That Quality Level Is Determined Primarily By The Actual Design Of The Product Itself, Not By Quality Control In The Production Process.

In A Long Meter Hymn, A Singer - They Call It 'lays Out A Line.' And Then The Whole Church Joins In In Repeating That Line. And They Form A Wall Of Harmony So Tight, You Can't Wedge A Pin Between It.

Self-pity In Its Early Stage Is As Snug As A Feather Mattress. Only When It Hardens Does It Become Uncomfortable.

It Is A No-fail, Incontrovertible Reality: If You Get, Give. If You Learn, Teach. You Can't Do Anything With That Except Do It.

In All The Institutions I Try To Be Present And Accountable For All I Do And Leave Undone. I Know That Eventually I Shall Have To Be Present And Accountable N The Presence Of God. I Do Not Wish To Be Found Wanting.

I Believe Everything Is Energy. I Believe That The Meal You Serve Yourself, You Prepare, Is Energy. And If You Serve It To Your Family, It's Your Gift Of Energy To Them.

Prepare Yourself So That You Can Be A Rainbow In Somebody Else's Cloud.

My Mission In Life Is Not Merely To Survive, But To Thrive

Will To Survive

I Think When We Don't Know What To Do It's Wise To Do Nothing. Sit Down Quietly; Quiet Our Hearts And Minds And Breathe Deeply.

What I Think It Really Means Is: I'm A Teacher. I Am A Teacher. I Teach All The Time, As You Do And As All Of You Do-whether We Know It Or Not, Whether We Take Responsibility For It Or Not. I Hold Nothing Back Because I Want To See That Light Go Off. I Like To See The Children Say, 'i Never Thought Of That Before.' And I Think, 'i've Got Them!'

Nothing Will Work Unless You Do.

The Music Was My Friend, My Lover, My Family.

Hold Those Things That Tell Your History And Protect Them. During Slavery, Who Was Able To Read Or Write Or Keep Anything? The Ability To Have Somebody To Tell Your Story To Is So Important. It Says: 'i Was Here. I May Be Sold Tomorrow. But You Know I Was Here.'

If I Wanted To Write, I Had To Be Willing To Develop A Kind Of Concentration Found Mostly In People Awaiting Execution. I Had To Learn Technique And Surrender My Ignorance.

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.

We Need To Not Be In Denial About What We've Done, What We've Come Through. It Will Help Us If We All Do That.

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.

I Want To Be A Good Human Being. I'm Doing My Best, And I'm Working At It.

My Greatest Blessing Has Been The Birth Of My Son. My Next Greatest Blessing Has Been My Ability To Turn People Into Children Of Mine.

I Always Felt, If I Can Get To A Library, I'll Be Ok.

Let Us Live So We Do Not Regret Years Of Inertia And Ignorance, So When We Die We Can Say All Of Our Energy Was Dedicated To The Noble Liberation Of The Human Mind And Spirit, Beginning With My Own.

I Encourage Courtesy. To Accept Nothing Less Than Courtesy, And To Give Nothing Less Than Courtesy.

Everything In The Universe Has A Rhythm, Everything Dances.

When Someone Shows You Who They Are, Believe Them The First Time.

There Is An Intimate Laughter To Be Found Only Among Friends

Inspirational Friendship

I Did Then What I Knew How To Do. Now That I Know Better, I Do Better.

I'm Considered Wise, And Sometimes I See Myself As Knowing. Most Of The Time, I See Myself As Wanting To Know. And I See Myself As A Very Interested Person. I've Never Been Bored In My Life.

Life Loves To Be Taken By The Lapel And Told: 'i'm With You Kid. Let's Go.'

Whenever I'm Around Some Who Is Modest, I Think, 'run Like Hell And All Of Fire.' You Don't Want Modesty, You Want Humility.

The Holy Spirit Upon My Left Leads My Feet Without Ceasing Into The Camp Of The Righteous And Into The Tents Of The Free.

I Long, As Does Every Human Being, To Be At Home Wherever I Find Myself.

The First Thing I Do In The Morning When I Awaken Is Say, 'thank You, Lord!' I'm Grateful To Be Alive, And I'm Going To Try To Tell The Truth As Well As I Know And Tell It As Eloquently As I Can So That People Can Hear It.

I'm A Religious Woman. And I Feel I Have Responsibility. I Have No Modesty At All. I'm Even Afraid Of It - It's A Learned Affectation And It's Just Stuck On Me Like Decals. Now I Pray For Humility Because That Comes From Inside Out.

I Have No Modesty. Modesty Is A Learned Affectation. It's Like Decal Stuck Up On A Person.

Let Gratitude Be The Pillow Upon Which You Kneel To Say Your Nightly Prayer. And Let Faith Be The Bridge You Build To Overcome Evil And Welcome Good.

Having Courage Does Not Mean That We Are Unafraid. Having Courage And Showing Courage Mean We Face Our Fears. We Are Able To Say, 'i Have Fallen, But I Will Get Up.'

We Delight In The Beauty Of The Butterfly, But Rarely Admit The Changes It Has Gone Through To Achieve That Beauty.

Martin Luther King Was A Human Being With A Brilliant Mind, A Powerful Heart, And Insight, And Courage And Also With A Sense Of Humor. So He Was Accessible.

I'm Convinced That I'm A Child Of God. That's Wonderful, Exhilarating, Liberating, Full Of Promise. But The Burden Which Goes Along With That Is, I'm Convinced That Everybody Is A Child Of God. . . . I Weep A Lot. I Thank God I Laugh A Lot, Too. The Main Thing In One's Own Private World Is To Try To Laugh As Much As You Cry.

Whining Lets The Brute Know There's A Victim For Him In The Neighborhood!

I Wish That We Could Look Into Each Other's Faces, In Each Other's Eyes, And See Our Own Selves. I Hope That The Children Have Not Been So Scarred By Their Upbringing That They Only Think Fear When They See Someone Else Who Looks Separate From Them.

I Wouldn't Trade Anything For My Story Now.

I Find In My Poetry And Prose The Rhythms And Imagery Of The Best - I Mean, When I'm At My Best - Of The Good Southern Black Preachers. The Lyricism Of The Spirituals And The Directness Of Gospel Songs And The Mystery Of Blues Are In My Music Or In My Poetry And Prose, Or I Missed Everything.

We Allow Our Ignorance To Prevail Upon Us And Make Us Think We Can Survive Alone, Alone In Patches, Alone In Groups, Alone In Races, Even Alone In Genders.

I Always Knew From That Moment, From The Time I Found Myself At Home In That Little Segregated Library In The South, All The Way Up Until I Walked Up The Steps Of The New York City Library, I Always Felt, In Any Town, If I Can Get To A Library, I'll Be Okay. It Really Helped Me As A Child, And That Never Left Me. So I Have A Special Place For Every Library, In My Heart Of Hearts.

Strong Women- Precious Jewels All- Their Humanness Is Evident In Their Accessibility. We Are Able To Enter Into The Spirit Of These Women And Rejoice In Their Warmth And Courage.

Ritie, Don't Worry 'cause You Ain't Pretty. Plenty Pretty Women I Seen Digging Ditches Or Worse. You Smart. I Swear To God, I Rather You Have A Good Mind Than A Cute Behind.

Be Certain That You Do Not Die Without Having Done Something Wonderful For Humanity.

Inspirational Life

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

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.

Black And White

There's A World Of Difference Between Truth And Facts. Facts Can Obscure The Truth.

Live Life As If It Were Created Just For You.

If We Are Honest And Fair, Then We Are Known By That. If We Are Not, Alas, We Are Known By That As Well. What We Want To Do Is Do Right, But You Have To Say It, You Have To Show It, And Not Stop.

On This Platform Of Peace, We Can Create A Language To Translate Ourselves To Ourselves And To Each Other.

Now, After Years Of Observation And Enough Courage To Admit What I Have Observed, I Try To Plant Peace If I Do Not Want Discord; To Plant Loyalty And Honesty If I Want To Avoid Betrayal And Lies.

I Am Serious, So I Laugh A Lot. You Need To Laugh. You Don't Laugh Enough. I Don't Trust Anyone Who Doesn't Laugh.

You Can't Really Know Where You Are Going Until You Know Where You Have Been.

Where You Are Going

During Bad Circumstances, Which Is The Human Inheritance, You Must Decide Not To Be Reduced. You Have Your Humanity, And You Must Not Allow Anything To Reduce That. We Are Obliged To Know We Are Global Citizens. Disasters Remind Us We Are World Citizens, Whether We Like It Or Not.

I Believe Talent Is Like Electricity. We Don't Understand Electricity. We Use It. You Can Plug Into It And Light Up A Lamp, Keep A Heart Pump Going, Light A Cathedral, Or You Can Electrocute A Person With It. Electricity Will Do All That. It Makes No Judgment. I Think Talent Is Like That. I Believe Every Person Is Born With Talent.

One Of The Saddest Things In The World Is To See A Cynical Young Person.

There's Racism And Sexism And Ageism And All Sorts Of Idiocies. But Bad News Is Not News. We've Had Bad News As A Species For A Long Time. We've Had Slavery And Human Sacrifice And The Holocaust And Brutalities Of Such Measure.

I've Always Written. There's A Journal Which I Kept From About 9 Years Old. The Man Who Gave It To Me Lived Across The Street From The Store And Kept It When My Grandmother's Papers Were Destroyed. I'd Written Some Essays. I Loved Poetry, Still Do. But I Really, Really Loved It Then.

Love Is That Condition In The Human Spirit So Profound That It Allows Me To Survive, And Better Than That, To Thrive With Passion, Compassion, And Style.

Courage Is The Most Important Of All The Virtues, Without It, You Can Practice No Other.

You May Not Control All The Events That Happen To You, But You Can Decide Not To Be Reduced By Them. Try To Be A Rainbow In Someone Else's Cloud. Do Not Complain. Make Every Effort To Change Things You Do Not Like. If You Cannot Make A Change, Change The Way You Have Been Thinking. You Might Find A New Solution.

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.

When You Know You Are Of Worth, You Don't Have To Raise Your Voice, You Don't Have To Become Rude, You Don't Have To Become Vulgar; You Just Are. And You Are Like The Sky Is, As The Air Is, The Same Way Water Is Wet. It Doesn't Have To Protest.

I Think I Know That I Deserve Better. And So I Try For Better. I'm Never So Put Off That I Would Ever Walk Out Of A Place Not Having Tried The Best I Could.

I Get Up In The Morning, And I'm Reluctant To Turn On The Television.

Everybody Is Worth Everything.

I Know Some People Might Think It Odd - Unworthy Even - For Me To Have Written A Cookbook, But I Make No Apologies. The U.s. Poet Laureate Billy Collins Thought I Had Demeaned Myself By Writing Poetry For Hallmark Cards, But I Am The People's Poet So I Write For The People.

The Black Kids, The Poor White Kids, Spanish-speaking Kids, And Asian Kids In The Us - In The Face Of Everything To The Contrary, They Still Bop And Bump, Shout And Go To School Somehow. Their Optimism Gives Me Hope.

A Single Fantasy Can Transform A Million Realities.

Once You Appreciate One Of Your Blessings, One Of Your Senses, Your Sense Of Hearing, Then You Begin To Respect The Sense Of Seeing And Touching And Tasting, You Learn To Respect All The Senses.

There's Something Which Impels Us To Show Our Inner Souls. The More Courageous We Are, The More We Succeed In Explaining What We Know.

Won't It Be Wonderful When Black History And Native American History And Jewish History And All Of U.s. History Is Taught From One Book. Just U.s. History.

Native American

Those Of Us Who Submitted Or Surrendered Our Ideas And Dreams And Identities To The 'leaders' Must Take Back Our Rights, Our Identities, Our Responsibilities.

Love Builds Up The Broken Wall And Straightens The Crooked Path. Love Keeps The Stars In The Firmament And Imposes Rhythm On The Ocean Tides. Each Of Us Is Created Of It And I Suspect Each Of Us Was Created For It.

It Is A No-fail, Incontrovertible Reality: If You Get, Give. If You Learn, Teach. You Can't Do Anything With That Except Do It.

Effective Action Is Always Unjust.

Information Helps You To See That You're Not Alone. That There's Somebody In Mississippi And Somebody In Tokyo Who Have Wept, Who've All Longed And Lost, Who've All Been Happy. So The Library Helps You To See, Not Only That You Are Not Alone, But That You're Not Really Any Different From Everyone Else.

Loving Someone Liberates The Lover As Well As The Beloved. And That Kind Of Love Comes With Age.

One Of The Problems We Have As Writers Is We Don't Take Ourselves Seriously While Writing; Being Serious Is Setting Aside A Time And Saying If It Comes, Good; If It Doesn't Come, Good, I'll Just Sit Here.

It's Amazing. I Can Do Anything. And Do It Well. Any Good Thing, I Can Do It. That's Why I Am Who I Am, Yes, Because God Loves Me And I'm Amazed At It. I'm Grateful For It.

We Agreed That Great Men And Women Should Be Forced To Live As Long As Possible. The Reverence They Enjoyed Was A Life Sentence, Which They Could Neither Revoke Nor Modify.

Love Recognizes No Barriers.

The Caged Bird Sings With A Fearful Trill, Of Things Unknown, But Longed For Still, And His Tune Is Heard On The Distant Hill, For The Caged Bird Sings Of Freedom.

Each Of Us Has A Responsibility For Being Alive: One Responsibility To Creation, Of Which We Are A Part, Another To The Creator A Debt We Repay By Trying To Extend Our Areas Of Comprehension.

When You Learn, Teach, When You Get, Give.

It Is This Belief In A Power Larger Than Myself And Other Than Myself Which Allows Me To Venture Into The Unknown And Even The Unknowable.

I Believe That One Can Never Leave Home. I Believe That One Carries The Shadows, The Dreams, The Fears And The Dragons Of Home Under One's Skin, At The Extreme Corners Of One's Eyes And Possibly In The Gristle Of The Earlobe.

Try To Live Your Life In A Way That You Will Not Regret Years Of Useless Virtue And Inertia And Timidity.

We Are All Creative, But By The Time We Are Three Of Four Years Old, Someone Has Knocked The Creativity Out Of Us. Some People Shut Up The Kids Who Start To Tell Stories. Kids Dance In Their Cribs, But Someone Will Insist They Sit Still. By The Time The Creative People Are Ten Or Twelve, They Want To Be Like Everyone Else.

I Believe That One Can Never Leave Home. I Believe That One Carries The Shadows, The Dreams, The Fears And The Dragons Of Home Under One's Skin, At The Extreme Corners Of One's Eyes And Possibly In The Gristle Of The Earlobe.

Until Blacks And Whites See Each Other As Brother And Sister, We Will Not Have Parity. It's Very Clear.

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.

I Have Respect For The Past, But I'm A Person Of The Moment.

When We Come To It We Must Confess That We Are The Possible We Are The Miraculous, The True Wonders Of This World, That Is When, And Only When We Come To It

...we May Encounter Many Defeats, But We Must Not Be Defeated. That Sounds Goody Two-shoes, I Know, But I Believe That A Diamond Is The Result Of Extreme Pressure And Time. Less Time Is Crystal. Less Than That Is Coal. Less Than That Is Fossilized Leaves. Less Than That It's Just Plain Dirt. 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.

I Have A Feeling That I Make A Very Good Friend, And I'm A Good Mother, And A Good Sister, And A Good Citizen. I Am Involved In Life Itself - All Of It. And I Have A Lot Of Energy And A Lot Of Nerve.

I Believe What I Have To Say Is Important, And I Believe The People Coming To Hear Me Are Important, And So The Occasion Of Itself Alone Has An Importance, Which Forces Me To Stare Down My Nerves.

Have Enough Courage To Trust Love One More Time And Always One More Time.

You Know, I Never Trust People Who Don't Laugh, Who Said, "i Am Serious" And Act As If They Put Airplane Glue On The Back Of Their Hands And Stuck The Glue To Their Foreheads. I Think, "you're Not Serious; You're Boring As Hell."

They Who Have Health Have Hope; And They Who Have Hope, Have Everything.

Putting Down On Paper What You Have To Say Is An Important Part Of Writing, But The Words And Ideas Have To Be Shaped And Cleaned, Cleaned As Severely As A Dog Cleans A Bone, Cleaned Until There's Not A Shred Of Anything Superfluous.

Develop Enough Courage So That You Can Stand Up For Yourself And Then Stand Up For Somebody Else.

'god Put The Rainbow In The Clouds, Not Just In The Sky'... It Is Wise To Realize We Already Have Rainbows In Our Clouds, Or We Wouldn't Be Here. If The Rainbow Is In The Clouds, Then In The Worst Of Time, There Is The Possibility Of Seeing Hope... We Can Say 'i Can Be A Rainbow In The Cloud For Someone Yet To Be.' That May Be Our Calling.

I Read The Bible To Myself; I'll Take Any Translation, Any Edition, And Read It Aloud, Just To Hear The Language, Hear The Rhythm, And Remind Myself How Beautiful English Is.

I'm Working At Trying To Be A Christian And That's Serious Business. It's Like Trying To Be A Good Jew, A Good Muslim, A Good Buddhist, A Good Shintoist, A Good Zoroastrian, A Good Friend, A Good Lover, A Good Mother, A Good Buddyit's Serious Business. It's Not Something Where You Think, Oh, I've Got It Done. I Did It All Day, Hotdiggety. The Truth Is, All Day Long You Try To Do It, Try To Be It, And Then In The Evening If You're Honest And Have A Little Courage You Look At Yourself And Say, Hmm. I Only Blew It Eighty-six Times. Not Bad.

My Encouragement To You Is To Go Tomorrow To The Library.

I Like To Know What's Happening.

Difficult Is A Far Cry From Impossible. The Distance Between These Two Lies Hope. Hope And Fear Cannot Occupy The Same Space At The Same Time. Invite One To Stay.

Love Is A Condition So Powerful; It May Be That Which Pulls The Stars In The Firmament. It May Be That Which Pushes And Urges The Blood In The Veins. Courage: You Have To Have Courage To Love Somebody Because You Risk Everything-ever Ything.

When I'm Writing, I Am Trying To Find Out Who I Am, Who We Are, What We're Capable Of, How We Feel, How We Lose And Stand Up, And Go On From Darkness Into Darkness.

At Our Best, We Are All Teachers

In So Many Ways, Segregation Shaped Me, And Education Liberated Me.

Grace Is Like A Lake Of Drinkable Water Right Outside Your Door. But You Stay Inside And Die Of Thirst.

It's So Tedious Writing Cookbooks Or Writing The Recipes Because I've Never Been Much Of A Measurer. But To Write A Book, You Have To Measure Everything.

Something Made Greater By Ourselves And In Turn That Makes Us Greater.

Be Present In All Things And Thankful For All Things.

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.

Life Is A Glorious Banquet, A Limitless And Delicious Buffet.

Because Of Technological Breakthroughs, The Society Will Need Fewer And Fewer Unskilled Laborers.

I Want To Write So Well That A Person Is 30 Or 40 Pages In A Book Of Mine ... Before She Realizes She's Reading.

We Are More Alike Than Unalike.

Pretty Women Wonder Where My Secret Lies, Im Not Cute Or Built To Fit A Fashion Models Size.

One Must Learn To Care For Oneself First, So That One Can Then Dare To Care For Someone Else.

We Can See, From California To New York, From Maine To Florida, Seattle To New Mexico - Everywhere There Are Women's Groups. Everywhere There Are Women Who Have Gotten Together To Examine Global Warming, And Women Who Have Gotten Together To Prepare Each Other For Single Parenting - There Are Women Who Have Come Together To Be Supportive To Those Whose Mates Are In Prison, Male Or Female, Partners Are In Prison. All Sorts Of Gatherings Of Women. I Mean, I'm Just Celebrating My 80th Year On This Planet, And I Look Back 50 Years Ago And There Was Nothing Like That.

We Are All Creative, But By The Time We Are Three Of Four Years Old, Someone Has Knocked The Creativity Out Of Us. Some People Shut Up The Kids Who Start To Tell Stories. Kids Dance In Their Cribs, But Someone Will Insist They Sit Still. By The Time The Creative People Are Ten Or Twelve, They Want To Be Like Everyone Else.

Few, If Any, Survive Their Teens. Most Surrender To The Vague But Murderous Pressure Of Adult Conformity.

Prejudice Is A Burden That Confuses The Past, Threatens The Future And Renders The Present Inaccessible.

Human Beings Love Poetry. They Don't Even Know It Sometimes... Whether They're The Songs Of Bono, Or The Songs Of Justin Bieber... They're Listening To Poetry.

I've Learned That You Can Tell A Lot About A Person By The Way (s)he Handles These Three Things: A Rainy Day, Lost Luggage, And Tangled Christmas Tree Lights.

I Thought If War Did Not Include Killing, I'd Like To See One Every Year.

Money And Power Can Liberate Only If They Are Used To Do So. They Can Imprison And Inhibit More Finally Than Barred Windows And Iron Chains.

Preach It, I Say Preach It.

The Root Cause Of All The Problems We Have In The World Today Is Ignorance Of Course. But Most, Polarization.

I Did What I Knew.. When I Knew Better, I Did Better

Most Plain Girls Are Virtuous Because Of The Scarcity Of Opportunity To Be Otherwise.

I Wasn't A Pretty Girl. I Was Six Feet Tall At 15, You Know.

Therefore We Pledge To Bind Ourselves To One Another, To Embrace Our Lowliest, To Keep Company With Our Loneliest, To Educate Our Illiterate, To Feed Our Starving, To Clothe Our Ragged, To Do All Good Things, Knowing That We Are More Than Keepers Of Our Brothers And Sisters. We Are Our Brothers And Sisters

I Not Only Have The Right To Stand Up For Myself, But I Have The Responsibility. I Can't Ask Somebody Else To Stand Up For Me If I Won't Stand Up For Myself. And Once You Stand Up For Yourself, You'd Be Surprised That People Say, "can I Be Of Help?".

My Mother Said I Must Always Be Intolerant Of Ignorance But Understanding Of Illiteracy. That Some People, Unable To Go To School, Were More Educated And More Intelligent Than College Professors.

Shakespeare Must Be A Black Girl.

Everybody Born Comes From The Creator Trailing Wisps Of Glory.

If We Are Bold, Love Strikes Away The Chains Of Fear From Our Souls.

I Wish That We Could Look Into Each Other's Faces, In Each Other's Eyes, And See Our Own Selves. I Hope That The Children Have Not Been So Scarred By Their Upbringing That They Only Think Fear When They See Someone Else Who Looks Separate From Them.

There Is A Very Fine Line Between Loving Life And Being Greedy For It.

I’m Grateful For Being Here, For Being Able To Think, For Being Able To See, For Being Able To Taste, For Appreciating Love – For Knowing That It Exists In A World So Rife With Vulgarity, With Brutality And Violence, And Yet Love Exists. I’m Grateful To Know That It Exists.

Determine To Live Life With Flair And Laughter.

Hatred Is The Ballast Of The Rock Which Lies Upon Our Necks And Underfoot.

Courage Allows The Successful Woman To Fail - And To Learn Powerful Lessons From The Failure - So That In The End, She Didn't Fail At All.

Without Courage You Cannot Practice Any Of The Other Virtues.

All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes.

Still, When It Looked Like The Sun Wasn't Going To Shine Anymore, God Put A Rainbow In The Clouds.

The Woman Who Survives Intact And Happy Must Be At Once Tender And Tough.

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 Muslim Or Good Zen Buddhist. You Work All Day Long And Achieve Some Kind Of Level Of Success By Nightfall, Go To Sleep And Wake Up The Next Morning With The Job Still To Be Done. So You Start All Over Again.

If You're Going To Live, Leave A Legacy. Make A Mark On The World That Can't Be Erased.

Laugh...it's The Sweetest Thing One Can Do For Oneself And One's Fellow Human Beings.

Mostly, What I Have Learned So Far About Aging, Despite The Creakiness Of One's Bones And Cragginess Of One's Once-silken Skin, Is This: Do It. By All Means, Do It.

I Encourage You To Live With Life. Be Courageous, Adventurous. Give Us A Tomorrow, More Than We Deserve.

If You Have, Give. If You Learn, Teach.

I Have Found That Among Its Other Benefits, Giving Liberates The Soul Of The Giver.

Pretty Women Wonder Where My Secret Lies.

If You're For The Right Thing, You Do It Without Thinking.

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Katherine Anne Porter

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