I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

by Maya Angelou

"I am a human being," she would always say, "therefore nothing human is alien to me."

Words mean more than what is set down on paper.

She said that I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy.

I was liked, and what a difference it made.

I find it interesting that the meanest life, the poorest existence, is attributed to God's will, but as human beings become more affluent, as their living standard and style begin to ascend the material scale, God descends the scale of responsibility at a commensurate speed.

It was awful to be Negro and have no control over my life. It was brutal to be young and already trained to sit quietly and listen to charges brought against my color with no chance of defense.

she had given me her secret word which called forth a djinn who was to serve me all my life: books.

The needs of a society determine its ethics, and in the Black American ghettos the hero is that man who is offered only the crumbs from his country's table but by ingenuity and courage is able to take for himself a Lucullan feast.

The world had ended, and I was the only person who knew it. People walked along the streets as if the pavements hadn't all crumbled beneath their feet. They pretended to breathe in and out while all the time I knew the air had been sucked away in a monstrous inhalation from God Himself. I alone was suffocating in the nightmare.