Maya Angelou Quotes

Black Americans should be given credit for finding probably the perfect weapon; the weapon of the song. And that song continues. Most holocausts don't, so they have this bitterness left over. The phenomenon of the world, as far as Black Americans are considered, is that we are not a bitter people.

What we call soul has been around a long time. It comes out of a particular culture that is African in origin, but influenced by 250 years of slavery, as well as other forms of racial oppression.

Look around at the countries of Europe, and you'll find that practically all of them have pasts that are just as tragic as Ireland's, yet the people seem able to find some creative way at moving into the future.

With 'Underground,' we see that the wounds that we all, as a nation, inflicted upon our brothers and sisters during slavery have not been healed.

If you feel like the beginning of your history is rooted in slavery, that really, I think, messes with your sense of self, your self-esteem, and your self-worth.

Sappho survives, because we sing her songs; And Eschylus, because we read his plays!

To create an album of love, I really had - I thought it was going to be easy, because I've always written love songs. But I thought if I really want to make a love album that contributes, that actually means something, I've got to go deep.

It's not that I'm afraid of death, but afraid of the thought of my people laid to rest; They saying there is 6 million ways of death but not even one way to fade the stress.

Writing, madam, is a mechanic part of wit. A gentleman should never go beyond a song or a billet.

This day will never come again and anyone who fails to eat and drink and taste and smell it will never have it offered to him again in all eternity. The sun will never shine as it does today...But you must play your part and sing a song, one of your best.

Eloquence the soul, song charms the senses.

Armed with the knowledge of our past, we can with confidence charter a course for our future. Culture is an indispensable weapon in the freedom struggle. We must take hold of it and forge the future with the past.

A creative act enhances the beauty of the world; it gives something to the world, it never takes anything from it. A creative person comes into the world, enhances the beauty of the world - a song here, a painting there. He makes the world dance better, enjoy better, love better, meditate better.

If a thing can be said in ten words, I may be relied upon to take a hundred to say it. I ought to apologize for that. I ought to prune, pare and extirpate excess growth, but I will not. I like words—strike that, I love words—and while I am fond of the condensed and economical use of them in poetry, in song lyrics, in Twitter, in good journalism and smart advertising, I love the luxuriant profusion and mad scatter of them too.

I see little more important to the future of our country and our civilization than the full recognition of the place of the artist.

John could write a mean song. He had a lot of venom in him. Whereas I had a happy childhood.

We should write an elegy for every day that has slipped through our lives unnoticed and unappreciated. Better still, we should write a song of thanksgiving for all the days that remain-now that we know how to cherish them.

When I was a kid, I'd go to the African-American section in the bookstore, and I'd try and find African-American people I hadn't read before. So in that sense the category was useful to me. But it's not useful to me as I write. I don't sit down to write an African-American zombie story or an African-American story about elevators. I'm writing a story about elevators which happens to talk about race in different ways. Or I'm writing a zombie novel which doesn't have that much to do with being black in America. That novel is really about survival.

Over a half-century has passed since the hell of the Holocaust, but its spectre still hangs over the world and doesn't allow us to forget.

Not only every great poet, but every genuine, but lesser poet, fulfils once for all some possibility of language, and so leaves one possibility less for his successors.

I've written some poetry, but...songs have to be more poetic, and I've really gotten to this non-poetic sort of writing.

And truly Philosophy is but sophisticated poetry. Whence do those ancient writers derive all their authority but from the poets?

Song is the heroics of speech.