"I know that one of the great..." - Quote by Maya Angelou
I know that one of the great arts that the writer develops is the art of saying, 'No. No, I'm finished. Bye.' And leaving it alone. I will not write it into the ground. I will not write the life out of it. I won't do that.
More by Maya Angelou
“If we accept being talked to any kind of a way, then we are telling ourselves we are not quite worth the best. And if we have the effrontery to talk to anybody with less than courtesy, we tell ourselves and the world we are not very intelligent.”
“Effective action is always unjust.”
“I encourage courtesy. To accept nothing less than courtesy, and to give nothing less than courtesy. If we accept being talked to any kind of a way, then we are telling ourselves we are not quite worth the best. And if we have the effrontery to talk to anybody with less than courtesy, we tell ourselves and the world we are not very intelligent.”
More on Writing
“My life is, in a sense, trash. My life is only that of which the residue is my writing.”
“Nothing goes by luck in composition. It allows of no tricks. The best you can write will be the best you are.”
“This is not writing at all. Indeed, I could say that Shakespeare surpasses literature altogether, if I knew what I meant.”
More on Art
“On stage you're free. You can say and do things that if you said and did any place else, you'd be arrested.”
“Temperament is the primary requisite for the critic - a temperament exquisitely susceptible to beauty, and to the various impressions that beauty gives us.”
“Every poet has trembled on the verge of science.”