Ask for what you want and be prepared to get it.

Love is that condition in the human spirit so profound that it allows me to survive, and better than that, to thrive with passion, compassion, and style.

You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it.

Laugh as much as you can.

Anger is like fire. It burns all clean. Conversations with Maya Angelou

If you have only one smile in you, give it to the people you love. Don't be surly at home, then go out in the street and start grinning "Good morning" at total strangers.

There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside of you.

Talent is like electricity. We don't understand electricity. We use it. You can plug into it and light up a lamp, keep a heart pump going, light a cathedral, or you can electrocute a person with it.

One isn't necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can't be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.

A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

How important it is for us to recognize and celebrate our heros and she-roes!

Poetry is music written for the human voice.

One would say of my life, 'born loser, had to be'--but it's not the truth. In the black community, however bad it looks, there's a lot of love and so much humor.

A bizarre sensation pervades a relationship of pretense. No truth seems true. A simple morning's greeting and response appear loaded with innuendo and fraught with implications. Each nicety becomes more sterile and each withdrawal more permanent. Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas

My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.

Each person deserves a day away in which no problems are confronted, no solutions searched. Each of us needs to withdraw from the cares which will not withdraw from us.

Everything in the universe has rhythm. Everything dances.

You may shoot me with your words, You may cut me with your eyes, You may kill me with your hatefulness, But still, like air, I'll rise.

Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with shades of deeper meaning.

You can't use up creativity, the more you use, the more you have.

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