Writer Quotes by Maya Angelou

You never get over the fear of writing.

— Maya Angelou

I'm not a writer who teaches. I'm a teacher who writes.

— Maya Angelou

Nathaniel Hawthorne once said that easy reading is damn hard writing.

— Maya Angelou

The best candy shop a child can be left alone in, is the library

— Maya Angelou

Writing and cookery are just two different means of communication.

— Maya Angelou

I always felt, if I can get to a library, I'll be OK.

— Maya Angelou

“I always felt, in any town, if I can get to a library, I'll be OK.”

— Maya Angelou

I'm a writer and writers either have good memories or nothing at all.

— Maya Angelou

When I write, I tend to twist my hair. Something for my small mind to do, I guess.

— Maya Angelou

Making a decision to write was a lot like deciding to jump into a frozen lake.

— Maya Angelou

I don't think there's such a thing as autobiographical fiction. If I say it happened, it happened, even if only in my…

— Maya Angelou

Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs,…

— Maya Angelou

I never have written every day. When I'm writing a book, I write Monday through Friday. I always try to take Saturday…

— Maya Angelou

I want to write so well that a person is 30 or 40 pages in a book of mine ... before she realizes she's reading.

— Maya Angelou

[Librarians] study their field with as much determination and as much delight as open-heart surgeons.

— Maya Angelou

I've read everything Thomas Wolfe ever wrote; my brother and I memorized whole chapters of 'You Can't Go Home Again' and 'Look…

— Maya Angelou

What I try to do is write. I may write for two weeks ‘the cat sat on the mat, that is that,…

— Maya Angelou

I agree with Balzac and 19th-century writers, black and white, who say, 'I write for money.' Yes, I think everybody should be…

— Maya Angelou

If I wanted to write, I had to be willing to develop a kind of concentration found mostly in people awaiting execution.…

— Maya Angelou

Each time I write a book, every time I face that yellow pad, the challenge is so great. I have written eleven…

— Maya Angelou

I know that one of the great arts that the writer develops is the art of saying, 'No. No, I'm finished. Bye.'…

— Maya Angelou

The public library building, in my view, is just a little lower than the church, the cathedral, the temple, the synagogue and…

— Maya Angelou

Information helps you to see that you're not alone. That there's somebody in Mississippi and somebody in Tokyo who all have wept,…

— Maya Angelou

We write for the same reason that we walk, talk, climb mountains or swim the oceans - because we can. We have…

— Maya Angelou

I look at some of the great novelists, and I think the reason they are great is that they're telling the truth.…

— Maya Angelou

When asked how she knows when her writing is where she wants it to be: "I know when it's the best I…

— Maya Angelou

“I don’t know about lying for novelists. I look at some of the great novelists, and I think the reason they are…

— Maya Angelou

The autobiographer looks at life through the lens of his or her own life and really uses herself or himself as the…

— Maya Angelou

I always knew from that moment, from the time I found myself at home in that little segregated library in the South,…

— Maya Angelou

We write for the same reason that we walk, talk, climb mountains or swim the oceans — because we can. We have…

— Maya Angelou

I always knew from that moment, from the time I found myself at home in that little segregated library in the South,…

— Maya Angelou

I certainly do not adore the writer's discipline. I have lost lovers, endangered friendships, and blundered into eccentricity, impelled by a concentration…

— Maya Angelou

When I am writing, I am trying to find out who I am, who we are, what we're capable of, how we…

— Maya Angelou

Whenever I want to laugh, I read a wonderful book, 'Children's Letters to God.' You can open it anywhere. One I read…

— Maya Angelou

The writer has to take the most used, most familiar objects - nouns, pronouns, verbs, adverbs - ball them together and make…

— Maya Angelou

I'm happy to be a writer - of prose, poetry, every kind of writing. Every person in the world who isn't a…

— Maya Angelou

I've still not written as well as I want to. I want to write so that the reader in Des Moines, Iowa,…

— Maya Angelou

I would be a liar, a hypocrite, or a fool - and I'm not any of those - to say that I…

— Maya Angelou

Putting down on paper what you have to say is an important part of writing, but the words and ideas have to…

— Maya Angelou

For a person who grew up in the '30s and '40s in the segregated South, with so many doors closed without explanation…

— Maya Angelou