I don’t know how much longer I’ll be around. I’ll probably be writing when the Lord says, ‚Maya, Maya Angelou, it’s time.‘

Death is a commingling of eternity with time; in the death of a good man, eternity is seen looking through time.

Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.

My dear sisters, whatever your calling, whatever your circumstances, we need your impressions, your insights, and your inspiration. We need you to speak up and speak out in ward and stake councils.

Words without actions are the assassins of idealism.

Instead of worrying about what people say of you, why not spend time trying to accomplish something they will admire.

It always seems to me so odd that when a man dies, he takes out with him all the knowledge that he has got in his lifetime whilst sowing his wild oats or winning successes. And he leaves his sons or younger brothers to go through all the work of learning it over again from their own experience.

One thing that writers have in common is that they are readers first. They have read lots and lots of stuff, because they’re just infested with lots of stuff.

Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.

If you are going to write, say, fantasy – stop reading fantasy. You’ve already read too much. Read other things; read westerns, read history, read anything that seems interesting, because if you only read fantasy and then you start to write fantasy, all you’re going to do is recycle the same old stuff and move it around a bit.

He is the greatest artist who has embodied, in the sum of his works, the greatest number of the greatest ideas.

Most people dream a dream when they are asleep. But to be a writer, you have to dream while you are awake, intentionally. So I get up early in the morning, 4 o’clock, and I sit at my desk and what I do is just dream. After three or four hours, that’s enough. In the afternoon, I run. The next day, the dream will continue.

If we’re going to bring out the best in people, we, too, need to sow seeds of encouragement.

I can remember being home from school with tonsillitis and writing stories in bed to pass the time.

O love, if I regret the age when one savors you, it is not for the hour of pleasure, but for the one that follows it.

Imagine for yourself a character, a model personality, whose example you determine to follow, in private as well as in public.

Errors are not in the art but in the artificers.

I write from my soul. This is the reason that critics don’t hurt me, because it is me. If it was not me, if I was pretending to be someone else, then this could unbalance my world, but I know who I am.

It’s a blessing that South Africa has a man like Nelson Mandela.

When I’m 40 and nobody wants to see me in a sparkly dress anymore, I’ll be like: ‚Cool, I’ll just go in the studio and write songs for kids.‘

Sometimes, reading a blog, which I do infrequently, I see that generations of Americans have been wilfully crippled, and can no longer spell or write a sentence.

Writing makes you feel that there is a reason to go on living. If I couldn’t write, I would stop breathing.

Writing and cookery are just two different means of communication.

On the plus side, death is one of the few things that can be done as easily lying down .

No matter what has happened to you in the past or what is going on in your life right now, it has no power to keep you from having an amazingly good future if you will walk by faith in God. God loves you! He wants you to live with victory over sin so you can possess His promises for your life today!

Why should I care about posterity? What’s posterity ever done for me?

Whenever I think about movies, I always look at that art process as having the best of a lot of worlds. Because if you watch a great film, you have a musical element to it, not just on the scoring, but in the way that the shots are edited – that has music and rhythm and time.

When I was 16, I started publishing all kinds of things in school magazines.

I could speak three languages when I was six, and when I went to school, I only liked to read and sketch. At five, I could write and everything.

When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, ‚I used everything you gave me‘.

I write some country music. There’s a song called ‚I Hope You Dance.‘ Incredible. I was going to write that poem; somebody beat me to it.

Speeches that are measured by the hour will die with the hour.

Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told: ‚I’m with you kid. Let’s go.‘

Your feelings so are important to write down, to capture, and to remember because today you’re heartbroken, but tomorrow you’ll be in love again.

Existence really is an imperfect tense that never becomes a present.

We have come to a turning point in the road. If we turn to the right mayhap our children and our children’s children will go that way; but if we turn to the left, generations yet unborn will curse our names for having been unfaithful to God and to His Word.

Memories are the key not to the past, but to the future.

Courage is contagious. When a brave man takes a stand, the spines of others are often stiffened.

I never woke up and thought, ‚I really want to live a bold life.‘

Soon, I’ll be like all the others. The time will come for all of us, but the ideas of the Cuban Communists will remain.

A good model of how to ‚work with the enemy‘ internally is presented by the Dalai Lama, in his endless caretaking of his soul as he confronts the Chinese government that invaded Tibet.

I really wish I knew what I was doing because I’d be writing hit songs every minute.

There is nothing in the world so much admired as a man who knows how to bear unhappiness with courage.

When I was born in 1920, the auto was only 20 years old. Radio didn’t exist. TV didn’t exist. I was born at just the right time to write about all of these things.

At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet.

The most pathetic person in the world is someone who has sight, but has no vision.

I would have written of me on my stone: I had a lover’s quarrel with the world.

This world is but a canvas to our imagination.

Because of your smile, you make life more beautiful.

When I was 8 years old, I saw ‚Raiders of the Lost Ark‘ in Charlotte, North Carolina. I walked out of there and was so inspired. I loved the movie, and I knew I wanted to be that guy.

Of all that is written, I love only what a person has written with his own blood.

Alas! how little does the memory of these human inhabitants enhance the beauty of the landscape!

You have to be practical. So every time I say, if you want to write a novel you have to be practical, people get bored. They are disappointed. They are expecting a more dynamic, creative, artistic thing to say. What I want to say is: you have to be practical.

No one can resist the idea of a crippled genius.

I remember being in Japan when Destiny’s Child put out ‚Independent Women,‘ and women there were saying how proud they were to have their own jobs, their own independent thinking, their own goals. It made me feel so good, and I realized that one of my responsibilities was to inspire women in a deeper way.

To see and listen to the wicked is already the beginning of wickedness.

He is winding the watch of his wit; by and by it will strike.

I do not like the man who squanders life for fame; give me the man who living makes a name.

The difference is too nice – Where ends the virtue or begins the vice.

Having listened to great songwriters like James Taylor and Carole King, I felt there was nothing new that was coming out that really represented me and the way I felt. So I started writing my own stuff.

You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.