I’ve still not written as well as I want to. I want to write so that the reader in Des Moines, Iowa, in Kowloon, China, in Cape Town, South Africa, can say, ‚You know, that’s the truth. I wasn’t there, and I wasn’t a six-foot black girl, but that’s the truth.‘

A bad book is as much of a labor to write as a good one, it comes as sincerely from the author’s soul.

It is healthier, in any case, to write for the adults one’s children will become than for the children one’s ‚mature‘ critics often are.

If I haven’t any talent for writing books or newspaper articles, well, then I can always write for myself.

If you keep on writing for three years, every day, you should be strong. Of course, you have to be strong mentally, also. But in the first place, you have to be strong physically. That is a very important thing. Physically and mentally you have to be strong.

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.

It’s pretty intense writing about my own life, my own struggles.

Writers write to influence their readers, their preachers, their auditors, but always, at bottom, to be more themselves.

If it is not right do not do it; if it is not true do not say it.

Talking is a hydrant in the yard and writing is a faucet upstairs in the house. Opening the first takes the pressure off the second.

Writing’s just as natural to me as getting up and cooking breakfast.

I don’t think about who the audience is for my books.

Charlotte Bronte was writing about sex. I supposed Jane Austen was, too. Where do you get a hero like Darcy unless you are writing about sex?

Everybody that I was in school with had an uncle or father in the law, and I started to realize that I was going to end up writing briefs for about ten years for these fellows who I thought I was smarter than. And I was kind of losing my feeling for that.

I don’t want enemies. I want friends, and I want them in all shapes, sizes, and colors, and loving whoever they want to.

Hundreds of people who’ve never written before send in ‚Dr. Who‘ scripts. They may have good ideas, but what they fail to realise is that writing for TV is incredibly complicated. They have no idea how difficult it is and what the financial commitment is.

For a true writer, each book should be a new beginning where he tries again for something that is beyond attainment. He should always try for something that has never been done or that others have tried and failed. Then sometimes, with great luck, he will succeed.

The best things and best people rise out of their separateness; I’m against a homogenized society because I want the cream to rise.

The writing is important, but the way you say the line and the pause you give it, the facial expression – all of that is very important.

In many ways, I’ve been writing personal stories all my life.

I write for no other purpose than to add to the beauty that now belongs to me. I write a book for no other reason than to add three or four hundred acres to my magnificent estate.

I’m a fantasy writer, called a fantasy writer. But there’s very little, apart from one or two basic concepts in ‚I Shall Wear Midnight,‘ which are in fact fantasy. You have sticks that fly, but they’re practical broomsticks, with a bloody great strap that you can hold on to so you don’t fall off. And you try not to use them too often.

The influence of ‚Hidden Fortress‘ comes up a lot because it was printed in a book once. The truth is, the only thing I was inspired by was the fact that it’s told from the point of view of two peasants, who get mixed up with a samurai and princess and a lot of very high-level people.

If I’m the people’s poet, then I ought to be in people’s hands – and, I hope, in their heart.

Building capacity dissolves differences. It irons out inequalities.

Write in such a way as that you can be readily understood by both the young and the old, by men as well as women, even by children.

I just wanted to write something about running, but I realized that to write about my running is to write about my writing. It’s a parallel thing in me.

I love stories about women.

Some of our earliest writing, in cuneiform, was about who owes what.

The pen is mightier than the sword if the sword is very short, and the pen is very sharp.

You have your ideology and I have mine.

I talk to my readers on social networking sites, but I never tell them what the book is about. Writing is lonely, so from time to time I talk to them on the Internet. It’s like chatting at a bar without leaving your office. I talk with them about a lot of things other than my books.

A novel is a work of poetry. In order to write it, one must have tranquility of spirit and of impression.

I don’t do research. I never have.

When everything works best, it’s not because you chose writing but because writing chose you. It’s when you’re mad with it, it’s when it’s stuffed in your ears, your nostrils, under your fingernails. It’s when there’s no hope but that.

I notice that my characters go out to dinner and have fun and take these great trips, but I spend so much time on their lives, I don’t have much of a personal life of my own. I have to sort of remember to fill out that little notebook on me.

Every day, my mom and I would watch a different Judy Garland VHS. I love how she tells a story when she sings. It was just about her voice and the words she was singing – no strings attached or silly hair or costumes, just a woman singing her heart out. I feel like that doesn’t happen that much anymore.

I have great respect for the semicolon; it is a mighty handy little fellow.

I write books back to back, and I work very hard on them.

In my work and in myself I reflect black people, women and men, as I reflect others. One day even the most self-protective ones will look into the mirror I provide and not be afraid.

I am not a self-help writer. I am a self-problem writer. When people read my books, I provoke some things. I cannot justify my work. I do my work; it is up to them to classify it, to judge.

I wanted to write.

I have always been pushed by the negative. The apparent failure of a play sends me back to my typewriter that very night, before the reviews are out. I am more compelled to get back to work than if I had a success.

I never have an intended audience. I just write, you know.

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.

True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, as those move easiest who have learn’d to dance.

Don’t say the old lady screamed. Bring her on and let her scream.

Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.

When I write, I write about my surroundings. Sometimes it’s light, and sometimes it gets very dark.

For an occurrence to become an adventure, it is necessary and sufficient for one to recount it.

I undertake the same project as Montaigne, but with an aim contrary to his own: for he wrote his Essays only for others, and I write my reveries only for myself.

Even if you have nothing to write, write and say so.

I never will, by any word or act, bow to the shrine of intolerance or admit a right of inquiry into the religious opinions of others.

The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for white, or women created for men.

It’s easy to make an album full of great songs. But I want people to go for the ride. The songs have to make sense together.

One is lucky to be born in a place where no one is doing it, because then you can say, ‚Well, obviously I can write better than everyone else in high school.‘ You have no idea of the competition.

Most rock journalism is people who can’t write, interviewing people who can’t talk, for people who can’t read.

No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.

I don’t believe in ‚thinking‘ old. Although I’ve transitioned through many bodies – a baby, toddler, child, teen, young adult, mid-life and older adult – my spirit is unchanged. I support my body with exercise, my mind with reading and writing, and my spirit with the knowing that I am part of the Divine source of all life.

The stories are not autobiographical, but they’re personal in that way. I seem to know only the things that I’ve learned. Probably some things through observation, but what I feel I know surely is personal.

I only type every third night. I have no plan. My mind is a blank. I sit down. The typewriter gives me things I don’t even know I’m working on. It’s a free lunch. A free dinner. I don’t know how long it is going to continue, but so far there is nothing easier than writing.