Maya Angelou Quotes

When I'm writing, I am trying to find out who I am, who we are, what we're capable of, how we feel, how we lose and stand up, and go on from darkness into darkness.

At the root of everything I write is tragedy.

But adulthood," continued the barely twentysomething, "doesn't give you power over what matters most. It doesn't protect you from pain, loss, fate. That's part of being human.

Because we managed to keep our heart open, despite the pain. Because we realized that the person who left us did not take the sun with them or leave darkness in their place.

It's our memories that make us who we are. Without them, we're nothing. If that means we have to hurt sometimes, it's worth it.

In those places of doubt and even darkness I've realized that who I am has nothing to do with wins or losses, applause, or negative criticism. It has to do with whose I am.

Those who will not slip beneath the still surface on the well of grief turning downward through it s black water to the place we cannot breathe will never know the source from which we drink, the secret water, cold and clear, nor find in the darkness glimmering the small round coins thrown by those who wished for something else.

I don't see life as an opportunity to see how far you can go in the pursuit of pain, although I think I've challenged it a bit.

The secret of poetry is cruelty.

I got lost in the night, without the light of your eyelids, and when the night surrounded me I was born again: I was the owner of my own darkness.

Darkness does not leave us easily as we would hope.

The solitude of writing is also quite frightening. It's quite close to madness, one just disappears for a day and loses touch.

For whatever we lose (like a you or a me), It's always our self we find in the sea.

There's a fine edge to new grief, it severs nerves, disconnects reality--there's mercy in a sharp blade. Only with time, as the edge wears, does the real ache begin.

So, I guess we are who we are for alot of reasons. And maybe we'll never know most of them. But even if we don't have the power to choose where we come from, we can still choose where we go from there. We can still do things. And we can try to feel okay about them.

The only thing grief has taught me is to know how shallow it is.

We must work on our souls, enlarging and expanding them. We do so by experiencing all of life-the beauty and the joy as well as the grief and pain. Soul work requires paying attention to life, to the laughter and the sorrow, the enlightening and the frightening, the inspiring and the silly.

When we come into the present, we begin to feel the life around us again, but we also encounter whatever we have been avoiding. We must have the courage to face whatever is present - our pain, our desires, our grief, our loss, our secret hopes our love - everything that moves us most deeply.

Grief does not change you, Hazel. It reveals you.

Trying to figure things out was my gig. Without the human condition, there's no struggle, no pain and that means no laughter.

Its funny because when I did feel like I came out and I just felt like I was being truthful to myself, (it was at) that point I became very successful. So you know, it took a true kind of facing that truth of myself and being honest, that was when the real kind of fame or whatever that kind of stuff happened for me.

I think life goes through a cycle of losing and refinding yourself all the time. Everyone has disappointments all the time, some of them pretty small, some of them pretty big.

I see tragedy and comedy and pain and irony and all that stuff. But in the end I think life is fascinating, and I think people are more good than bad, and I think that the possibilities of prog­ress are real.

I learned to love despair.

I say, 'Don't lose your heart, Rube.' And very clearly, without moving, my brother answers me. He says, 'I'm not tryin' to lose it, Cam. I'm tryin' to find it.