The contagiously calm person is the one who reminds others, "God is in control." This is the executive who tells the company, "Let's all do our part; we'll be okay." This is the leader who sees the challenge, acknowledges it, and observes, "These are tough times, but we'll get through them.

A woman who is convinced that she deserves to accept only the best challenges herself to give the best. Then she is living phenomenally.

You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them. Try to be a rainbow in someone's cloud. Do not complain. Make every effort to change things you do not like. If you cannot make a change, change the way you have been thinking. You might find a new solution.

While one may encounter many defeats, one must not be defeated.

Poetry puts starch in your backbone so you can stand, so you can compose your life.

Ain't nothin' to it, but to do it.

What I try to do is write. I may write for two weeks 'the cat sat on the mat, that is that, not a rat,'.... And it might be just the most boring and awful stuff. But I try. When I'm writing, I write. And then it's as if the muse is convinced that I'm serious and says, 'Okay. Okay. I'll come.

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

Graduation, the hush-hush magic time of frills and gifts and congratulations and diplomas, was finished for me before my name was called. The accomplishment was nothing. The meticulous maps, drawn in three colors of ink, learning and spelling decasyllabic words, memorizing the whole of The Rape of Lucrece - it was for nothing. Donleavy had exposed us. We were maids and farmers, handymen and washerwomen, and anything higher that we aspired to was farcical and presumptuous.

There was a possibility that God really did love me, me Maya Angelou. I suddenly began to cry at the gravity and grandeur of it all. I knew that if God loved me, then I could do wonderful things, I could try great things, learn anything, achieve anything. For what could stand against me, since one person, with God, constitutes the majority?

Stand up straight and realize who you are, that you tower over your circumstances. You are a child of God. Stand up straight.

I knew that if God loved me, then I could do wonderful things, I could try great things, learn anything, achieve anything. For what could stand against me, since one person, with God, constitutes the majority?