I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

by Maya Angelou

Of all the needs (there are none imaginary) a lonely child has, the one that must be satisfied, if there is going to be hope and a hope of wholeness, is the unshaking need for an unshakable God. My pretty Black brother was my Kingdom Come.

don't slip up on a not true.” (Nice people didn't say “lie.”)

Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with the shades of deeper meaning.”

In the soft dark the cotton truck spilled the pickers out and roared out of the yard with a sound like a giant's fart.

Somewhere in my fatalism I had expected to die, accidentally, and never have the chance to walk up the stairs in the auditorium and gracefully receive my hard-earned diploma.

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

Without willing it, I had gone from being ignorant of being ignorant to being aware of being aware.

I decided to take matters into my own hands. (An unfortunate but apt phrase.)

One evening as I walked up the hill suffering from youth's vague malaise (there was simply nothing to do),

“See, you don't have to think about doing the right thing. If you're for the right thing, then you do it without thinking.”