Maya Angelou quotes about the craft

You've got to work. Write each sentence over and over again, until it seems you've used every combination possible, then write it again.

Keep on telling the truth, Maya. Stay on the stage. I don't mean the night-club stage, or the theatrical stage. I mean on the stage of life.

If I wanted to write, I had to be willing to develop a kind of concentration found mostly in people awaiting execution.

All great artists draw from the same resource: the human heart, which tells us all that we are more alike than we are unalike.

There are certain artists who belong to all the people, everywhere, all the time.

I realized I was not a writer who teaches, but a teacher who writes.

Living life as art requires a readiness to forgive.

A conversation between friends can sound as melodic as a scripted song.

I realize that living well is an art which can be developed.

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

Oh, Black known and unknown poets, how often have your auctioned pains sustained us? Who will compute the lonely nights made less lonely by your songs, or the empty pots made less tragic by your tales?

But bear in mind, language is man's way of communicating with his fellow man and it is language alone which separates him from the lower animals.

During these years in Stamps, I met and fell in love with William Shakespeare. He was my first white love.

we survive in exact relationship to the dedication of our poets (include preachers, musicians and blues singers).