Contrary to the claims of some of my critics and some of the editorial pages, I am an ardent believer in the free market.

For my part, I consider that it will be found much better by all parties to leave the past to history, especially as I propose to write that history myself.

There is nothing more tragic than to find an individual bogged down in the length of life, devoid of breadth.

Life is like a wheel. Sooner or later, it always come around to where you started again.

Look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see, and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious.

A lot of people don’t like the road, but it’s as natural to me as breathing.

Advice in old age is foolish; for what can be more absurd than to increase our provisions for the road the nearer we approach to our journey’s end.

It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.

There will always be something to ruin our lives, it all depends on what or which finds us first. We are always ripe and ready to be taken.

In my entire life, any time I’ve ever lost something, I’ve gotten something even better going around the next corner. It’s like one door closes and another door opens. As long as I can walk through the produce section in every grocery store in this country and eat the grapes that they’re going to throw away, I know I can be fine.

A true artist is expected to be all that is noble-minded, and this is not altogether a mistake; on the other hand, however, in what a mean way are critics allowed to pounce upon us.

I’m seeing the world partially through the eyes of a kid. Not all the time. There’s no black and white to it. But sometimes I’m seeing it like I’m 4.

Fear of death increases in exact proportion to increase in wealth.

The infinitely little have a pride infinitely great.

However my parents – both of whom came from impoverished backgrounds and neither of whom had been to college, took the view that my overactive imagination was an amusing quirk that would never pay a mortgage or secure a pension.

What one fool can understand, another can.

Few people have the imagination for reality.

Kids will remind you that, even though you’ve gone down a road 100 times, it’s brand new for them – and that’s healthy.

It’s possible – you can never know – that the universe exists only for me. If so, it’s sure going well for me, I must admit.

I live halfway between reality and theater at all times. And I was born this way.

Isn’t it funny how babies laugh a lot? I read a toddler, a young child laughs 300 times a day. The average adult laughs, like, four times a day. God put it in them. He put the laugh in us, but I think sometimes we let life get us down, you know, have bad breaks, and we lose our breaks.

Too many people measure how successful they are by how much money they make or the people that they associate with. In my opinion, true success should be measured by how happy you are.

Lo, what huge heaps of littleness around!

The universe is wider than our views of it.

So many people are looking at what’s wrong, and I try to encourage them to look at what’s right in their life. A lot of people have it a lot worse than you do.

The bottom line is that everyone thinks differently.

It is the greatest of all advantages to enjoy no advantage at all.

I think the tiniest little thing can change the course of your day, which can change the course of your year, which can change who you are.

If one does not understand a person, one tends to regard him as a fool.

Great minds are related to the brief span of time during which they live as great buildings are to a little square in which they stand: you cannot see them in all their magnitude because you are standing too close to them.

Boredom is just the reverse side of fascination: both depend on being outside rather than inside a situation, and one leads to the other.

Every person takes the limits of their own field of vision for the limits of the world.

It put our energies to sleep and made visionaries of us – dreamers and indolent… It is good to begin life poor; it is good to begin life rich – these are wholesome; but to begin it prospectively rich! The man who has not experienced it cannot imagine the curse of it.

No one but a fool is always right.

The eye of a human being is a microscope, which makes the world seem bigger than it really is.

There are men so philosophical that they can see humor in their own toothaches. But there has never lived a man so philosophical that he could see the toothache in his own humor.

I was a peripheral visionary. I could see the future, but only way off to the side.

Of course, there are those critics – New York critics as a rule – who say, ‚Well, Maya Angelou has a new book out and of course it’s good but then she’s a natural writer.‘ Those are the ones I want to grab by the throat and wrestle to the floor because it takes me forever to get it to sing. I work at the language.

There may not be one Truth – there may be several truths – but saying that is not to say that reality doesn’t exist.

The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and about all time.

It is a terrible thing to see and have no vision.

When I first went to places where people were suffering from war and persecution, I felt ashamed of my feelings of sadness. I could see more possibilities in my life.

The higher a man stands, the more the word vulgar becomes unintelligible to him.

I like being able to be on the inside of music, rather than on the outside listening to it.

No finite point has meaning without an infinite reference point.

The person who has lived the most is not the one with the most years but the one with the richest experiences.

I have spent many years of my life in opposition, and I rather like the role.

My father wasn’t around when I was a kid, and I used to always say, ‚Why me? Why don’t I have a father? Why isn’t he around? Why did he leave my mother?‘ But as I got older I looked deeper and thought, ‚I don’t know what my father was going through, but if he was around all the time, would I be who I am today?‘

Measure your wealth by what you’d have left if you lost all your money.

I’m astounded by people who want to ‚know‘ the universe when it’s hard enough to find your way around Chinatown.

Truth has rough flavours if we bite it through.

It is a narrow mind which cannot look at a subject from various points of view.

Go to foreign countries and you will get to know the good things one possesses at home.

Who is rich? He that rejoices in his portion.

Things are more like they are now than they ever were before.

A sword never kills anybody; it is a tool in the killer’s hand.

If a victory is told in detail, one can no longer distinguish it from a defeat.

It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.

Anybody can be specific and obvious. That’s always been the easy way. It’s not that it’s so difficult to be unspecific and less obvious; it’s just that there’s nothing, absolutely nothing, to be specific and obvious about.

I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.

There is no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.