Maya Angelou - I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)

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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.

Maya Angelou
Anything that works against you can also work for you once you understand the Principle of Reverse.

Maya Angelou
That's what you want to do? Then nothing beats a trial but a failure. Give it everything you've got. I've told you many times, 'Cant do is like Dont Care.' Neither of them have a home.

Maya Angelou
You don't have to think about doing the right thing. If you're for the right thing, then you do it without thinking.

Maya Angelou
Of all the needs (there are none imaginary) a lonely child has, the one that must be satisfied, if there is going to be hope and a hope of wholeness, is the unshaking need for an unshakable God. My pretty Black brother was my Kingdom Come.

Maya Angelou
To be left alone on the tightrope of youthful unknowing is to experience the excruciating beauty of full freedom and the threat of eternal indecision.

Maya Angelou
Without willing it, I had gone from being ignorant of being ignorant to being aware of being aware. And the worst part of my awareness was that I didn't know what I was aware of. I knew I knew very little, but I was certain that the things I had yet to learn wouldn't be taught to me at George Washington High School.

Maya Angelou
He was a simple man who had no inferiority complex about his lack of education, and even more amazing no superiority complex because he had succeeded despite that lack.

Maya Angelou
I believe most plain girls are virtuous because of the scarcity of opportunity to be otherwise.

Maya Angelou
When things were very bad his soul just crawled behind his heart and curled up and went to sleep

Maya Angelou