Maya Angelou

"That knowledge humbles me, melts my bones, closes my ears, and makes my teeth rock loosely in their gums. And it also liberates me. I am a big bird winging over high mountains, down into serene valleys. I am ripples of waves on silver seas. I'm a spring leaf trembling in anticipation."

"The ache for home lives in all of us. The safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned."

"Courage - you develop courage by doing small things like just as if you wouldn't want to pick up a 100-pound weight without preparing yourself."

"As soon as healing takes place, go out and heal somebody else."

"I gave birth to one child, a son, but I have thousands of daughters. You are Black and White, Jewish and Muslim, Asian, Spanish speaking, Native Americans and Aleut. You are fat and thin and pretty and plain, gay and straight, educated and unlettered, and I am speaking to you all. Here is my offering to you."

"I want you to write down your blessings."

"I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself."

"We wear the mask that grins and lies.It shades our cheeks and hides our eyes.This debt we pay to human guileWith torn and bleeding hearts…We smile and mouth the myriad subtleties.Why should the world think otherwiseIn counting all our tears and sighs.Nay let them only see us whileWe wear the mask."

"I don't trust people who don't love themselves and tell me, 'I love you.' ... There is an African saying which is: Be careful when a naked person offers you a shirt."

"To be allowed, no, invited into the private lives of strangers, and to share their joys and fears, was a chance to exchange the Southern bitter wormwood for a cup of mead with Beowulf or a hot cup of tea and milk with Oliver Twist."

"Fighting for one's freedom, struggling towards being free, is like struggling to be a poet or a good Christian or a good Jew or a good Muslim or good Zen Buddhist. You work all day long and achieve some kind of level of success by nightfall, go to sleep and wake up the next morning with the job still to be done. So you start all over again."

"Every person under the sound of my voice is a soldier. You are either fighting for your freedom or betraying the fight for freedom or enlisted in the army to deny somebody else freedom."