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Writer Quotes by Maya Angelou

44 Writer quotes by Maya Angelou

All Writer quotes Maya Angelou’s page

Maya Angelou says easy reading is damn hard writing, reminding us that simple words hide a lot of effort. She talks about writing on a regular schedule and reading other authors to learn. She also notes that every experience, from a lonely bridge to a prom, can shape a writer’s voice.

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You never get over the fear of writing.

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

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

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

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Writing and cookery are just two different means of communication.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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More by Maya Angelou

Courage: the most important of all the virtues because without courage, you can't practice any other virtue consistently

If we accept being talked to any kind of a way, then we are telling ourselves we are not quite worth the best. And…

You should be angry. You must not be bitter. Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. It doesn't do anything to the…

“You are very kind and very intelligent and those elements are not always found together. Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt, Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune, and my…

I agreed a long time ago, I would not live at any cost. If I am moved or forced away from what I think…

You want me to do something... tell me I can't do it.

Intelligence is a separate gift, for the benefit of students, so that they may think of themselves as intellectual and not very intelligent, or…

Life is going to give you just what you put in it. Put your whole heart in everything you do, and pray, then you…

“You may write me down in history With your bitter, twisted lies, You may tread me in the very dirt But still, like dust,…

The more you know of your history, the more liberated you are.

Life offers us tickets to places which we have not knowingly asked for.

Every person needs to take one day away. A day in which one consciously separates the past from the future. Jobs, family, employers, and…

I'm working at trying to be a Christian, and that's serious business. It's like trying to be a good Jew, a good Muslim, a…

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

Sunday, if I'm lucky, I'll go to church or listen to some good spiritual advice on the television or on the radio. I take…