Maya Angelou quotes about identity

Intelligence always had a pornographic influence on me.

It is my neck and my life. I will live it whole or not at all.

all I had to do, really had to do, was stay black and die. Nothing could be more interesting than the first, or more permanent than the latter.

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.

The root cause of racism and its primary result is that whites refuse to see us simply as people.

Don't you ever threaten me. I am an African. I do not scare easily and I do not run at all.

I'm not going to run. 'Cause once you do, you have to keep on running.

I deserved everything beautiful and I merited putting my long black feet on Oriental carpets as much as Lady Astor.

there were too many old females and not nearly enough women.

They spell my name W-O-M-A-N, 'cause the difference between a female and a woman is the difference between shit and shinola.

He respects you. And maybe for an African, that's better than love.

Oh, but we knew them with the intimacy of a surgeon's scalpel.

Life doesn’t frighten me at all.

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.

My spirit is the surge of open seas.

Now I’m where I belong.

Living our lives with flash and style

Ain’t we colorful folks?

Willie was a man without fame

You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.

Never whine. Whining lets a brute know that a victim is in the neighborhood.

The birth of my son caused me to develop enough courage to invent my life.

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

We carry accumulation of years in our bodies and on our faces, but generally our real selves, the children inside, are still innocent and shy as magnolias.

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