01UndatedThomas Wolfe warned in the title of America’s great novel that ‘You Can’t Go Home Again.’ I enjoyed the book but I never agreed with the title. I believe that one can never leave home. I believe that one carries the shadows, the dreams, the fears and dragons of home under one’s skin, at the extreme corners of one’s eyes and possibly in the gristle of the earlobe.Home is that youthful region where a child is the only real living inhabitant. Parents, siblings, and neighbors, are mysterious apparitions, who come, go, and do strange unfathomable things in and around the child, the region’s only enfranchised citizen.[…]We may act sophisticated and worldly but I believe we feel safest when we go inside ourselves and find home, a place where we belong and maybe the only place we really do.Maya Angelou / quote ↗
02Undated...one can never leave home...one carries the shadows, the dreams, the dragons of home under one's skin, at the extreme corners of one's eyes...Maya Angelou / quote ↗
04UndatedTo be left alone on the tightrope of youthful unknowing is to experience the excruciating beauty of full freedom and the threat of eternal indecision.Maya Angelou / quote ↗
06UndatedUntil recently each generation found it more expedient to plead guilty to the charge of being young and ignorant, easier to take the punishment meted out by the older generation (which had itself confessed to the same crime short years before). The command to grow up at once was more bearable than the faceless horror of wavering purpose, which was youth.Maya Angelou / quote ↗
07UndatedIf you must look back, do so forgivingly. If you must look forward, do so prayerfully. However, the wisest thing you can do is be present in the present... gratefully.Maya Angelou / quote ↗
08UndatedAnd my seven-year-old world humpty-dumptied, never to be put back together again.Maya Angelou / quote ↗
09UndatedIf 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.Maya Angelou / quote ↗
10UndatedMany members of that early band of twentieth-century pilgrims must have yearned for the honesty of Southern landscapes where even if they were the targets of hate mongers who wanted them dead, they were at least credited with being alive. Northern whites with their public smiles of liberal acceptance and their private behavior of utter rejection wearied and angered the immigrants.Maya Angelou / quote ↗
11UndatedWhen I walk in, they may like me or dislike me, but everybody knows I'm hereMaya Angelou / quote ↗
13UndatedMost people don't grow up. Most people age. They find parking spaces, honor their credit cards, get married, have children, and call that maturity. What that is, is aging.Maya Angelou / quote ↗
14UndatedIf you happen to be white in a white country; pretty according to the dictates of fashion; rich in a country where money is adored, it’s almost impossible to grow up and to grow up honest inside. It is almost impossible. Most people don’t grow up. Most people age. They find parking spaces, honor their credit cards, get married, have children, and call that maturity. What that is, is aging. But to grow up, to take responsibility for the time you take up, and the space you occupy, to honor every living person for his or her humanity, that is to grow up.Maya Angelou / quote ↗
15Undatedremember this: When you cross my doorstep, you have already been raised. With what you have learned...you know the difference between right and wrong. Do right. Don't anybody raise you from the way you have been raised. Know you will have to make adaptations, in love, in relationships, in friends, in society, in work, but don't let anybody change your mind.Maya Angelou / quote ↗
16UndatedEach one of us has lived through some devastation, some loneliness, some weather superstorm or spiritual superstorm, when we look at each other we must say, I understand. I understand how you feel because I have been there myself. We must support each other and empathize with each other because each of us is more alike than we are unalike.Maya Angelou / quote ↗
17UndatedHate, it has caused a lot of problems in the world, but has not solved one yet.Maya Angelou / quote ↗
18UndatedWe 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.Maya Angelou / quote ↗
20UndatedWhen rain comes finally, washing away a low sky of muddy ocher, we who could not control the phenomenon are pressed into relief. The near-occult feeling: The face of being witness to the end of the world gives way to tangible things. Even if the succeeding sensations are not common, they are at least not mysterious.Maya Angelou / quote ↗
22UndatedSugar cane reach up to GodAnd every baby cryingShame the blanket of my nightAnd all my days are dyingMaya Angelou / quote ↗
24UndatedWhen you wish someone joy, you wish them peace, love, prosperity, happiness... all the good things.Maya Angelou / quote ↗
