"I promised myself that I would write..." - Quote by Maya Angelou

“Love liberates. Love - not sentimentality, not mush - but true love gives you enough courage that you can say to somebody, "Don't do that, baby." And the person will know you're not preaching but teaching.”

“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

“Some think, "If I marry this guy who's two inches taller than I am and who has a nice bank account, I won't die. If I buy six cars, I won't die. If I hate Jews, I won't die. If I hate homosexuals, I won't die." They think they will increase their life by shunting misery onto somebody else, but it's just the opposite.”

“Every serious man in dealing with really serious subjects carefully avoids writing. ... There does not exist, nor will there ever exist, any writing of mine dealing with this subject.”

“I very seldom, very seldom, even know what my characters look like.”

“I've still not written as well as I want to. I want to write so that the reader in Des Moines, Iowa, in Kowloon, China, in Cape Town, South Africa, can say, 'You know, that's the truth. I wasn't there, and I wasn't a six-foot black girl, but that's the truth.'”

“Diamonds are to be found only in the darkness of the earth, and truth in the darkness of the mind.”

“To hold, as 't were, the mirror up to nature.”

“The challenge today is to convince people of the value of truth, honesty, compassion and a concern for others.”