"In the flush of love's light, we..." - Quote by Maya Angelou

“What I try to do is write. I may write for two weeks ‘the cat sat on the mat, that is that, not a rat,’.... And it might be just the most boring and awful stuff. But I try. When I’m writing, I write. And then it’s as if the muse is convinced that I’m serious and says, ‘Okay. Okay. I’ll come.”

“Don't trust people who don't laugh. I don't.”

“Like a pianist runs her fingers over the keys, I'll search my mind for what to say. Now, the poem may want you to write it. And then sometimes you see a situation and think, 'I'd like to write about that.' Those are two different ways of being approached by a poem, or approaching a poem.”

“The things that make me cry are when the people I love have gone through pain and I’ve seen it.”

“I was once arrested with [Allen] Ginsburg. He was a big help to me. He was one of the few people who read unknown writer's work. Maybe he was just hustling me. He liked to flirt, Allen. They called him a monster but he was only falling in love.”

“sorrow...is a wound that bleeds when any hand but that of love touches it”

“Human beings are made up of flesh and blood, and a miracle fiber called courage.”

“But there are higher secrets of culture, which are not for the apprentices, but for proficients. These are lessons only for the brave. We must know our friends under ugly masks. The calamities are our friends.”

“Any danger spot is tenable if men, brave men, will make it so.”