"The writer has to take the most..." - Quote by Maya Angelou

“Time itself is an individual gift. It is wise to cherish it carefully and give it away generously.”

“My doctor told me that I really should lose some weight. "You're mildly obese," he said. And I thought, "Well, who couldn't afford to lose 20 or 30 pounds?" He said, "Well, a person in your category." I said, "What is that category, doctor?" He said, "Well, you're what I call upwardly middle aged." And I said, "I forgive you for everything."”

“If on Judgement Day I were summoned by St. Peter to give testimony to the used-to-be sheriff's act of kindness, I would be unable to say anything in his behalf. His confidence that my uncle and every other Black man who heard of the Klan's coming ride would scurry under their houses to hide in chicken droppings was too humiliating to hear. Without waiting for Momma's thanks, he rode out of the yard, sure that things were as they should be and that he was a gentle squire, saving those deserving serfs from the laws of the land, which he condoned.”

“For a creative writer possession of the 'truth' is less important than emotional sincerity.”

“I'm a writer and writers either have good memories or nothing at all.”

“I read the way a person might swim, to save his or her life. I wrote that way too.”

“Preposition: An enormously versatile part of grammar, as in 'What made you pick this book I didn't want to be read to out of up for?'”

“And you who wish to represent by words the form of man and all the aspects of his membrification, relinquish that idea. For the more minutely you describe the more you will confine the mind of the reader, and the more you will keep him from the knowledge of the thing described. And so it is necessary to draw and to describe.”

“Environmentalists changed the word jungle to rain forest, because no one would give them money to save a jungle. Same with swamps and wetlands.”