“I respect myself and insist upon it from everybody. And because I do i...” — Maya Angelou Quote

“I respect myself and insist upon it from everybody. And because I do it, I then respect everybody, too.”

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

“I became the kind of parent my mother was to me.”

“If you want what you're saying heard, then take your time and say it so that the listener will actually hear it. You might save somebody's life. Your own, first.”

“How wonderful it is to be an American. We have known the best of times and the worst of times.”

“The hope, the hope that lives in the breast of the black American, is just so tremendous that it overwhelms me sometimes.”

“Life doesn't stop because something happens to you.”

“With writing, I felt like it was just my free place where no one told me what to do because it was just my own.”

“I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.”

“So many people trip in front of them because they're looking over there or up ahead.”

“Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience.”

“When movement isn't enough, you dance, or when speaking isn't enough, you sing. When it's organic, and it's earned like that in a musical, that's when it works, and then there's nothing like it because it's this thing that takes you to a whole 'nother level, you know?”