“Autobiography is awfully seductive; it's wonderful. Once I got into it...” — Maya Angelou Quote

“Autobiography is awfully seductive; it's wonderful. Once I got into it, I realized I was following a tradition established by Frederick Douglass - the slave narrative - speaking in the first-person singular, talking about the first-person plural, always saying 'I,' meaning 'we.'”

“Until blacks and whites see each other as brother and sister, we will not have parity. It's very clear.”

“I'm convinced of this: Good done anywhere is good done everywhere. For a change, start by speaking to people rather than walking by them like they're stones that don't matter. As long as you're breathing, it's never too late to do some good.”

“Self-pity in its early stage is as snug as a feather mattress. Only when it hardens does it become uncomfortable.”

“If I walked into the kitchen without washing my hands as a kid, I'd hear a loud 'A-hem!' from my mother or grandmother. Now I count on other people to do the same.”

“Whatever you want to do, if you want to be great at it, you have to love it and be able to make sacrifices for it.”

“I didn't want to sugarcoat anything. I wanted to make an honest story. Of course, to write a real autobiography, you've got to tell the downside.”

“When I was a kid, my father brought home the autobiography of Sid Luckman, the great Chicago Bears quarterback - probably an extra copy from the sports department where he worked. It was the first sports biography I ever read.”

“I do like reading autobiographies, if I'm honest.”

“My father always told me I should be a writer, and I found I loved writing my autobiography; writing is such an interesting process.”

“More and more I'm finding that I'm reading history, I'm reading biography, I'm reading autobiography for a sense of people who've been able to provide leadership. I don't read leadership books anymore.”

“I think I do more fiction than autobiography.”