I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings Quotes

“I hadn't so much forgot as I couldn't bring myself to remember. Other things were more important.”
― Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

“She was our mother and belonged to us. She was never mentioned to anyone because we simply didn't have enough of her to share.”
― Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

“The tragedy of lameness seems so unfair to children that they are embarrassed in its presence. And they, most recently off nature’s mold, sense that they have only narrowly missed being another of her jokes. In relief at the narrow escape, they vent their emotions in impatience and criticism of the unlucky cripple.”
― Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

“Sua avó diz que você lê muito. Em todas as oportunidades que tem. Isso é bom, mas não o suficiente. Palavras significam mais do que é colocado no papel. É preciso a voz humana para dar a elas as nuances do significado mais profundo.”
― Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

“Laughter so easily turns to hysteria for imaginative children.”
― Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

“In Stamps the segregation was so complete that most Black children didn't really, absolutely know what whites looked like. Other than that they were different, to be dreaded, and in that dread was included the hostility of the powerless against the powerful, the poor against the rich, the worker against the worked for and the ragged against the well dressed.

I remember never believing that whites were really real.”
― Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

“Without willing it, I had gone from being ignorant of being ignorant to being aware of being unaware. And the worst part of my awareness was that I didn't know what I was aware of.”
― Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

“I read more than ever, and wished my soul that I had been born a boy. Horatio Alger was the greatest writer in the world. His heroes were always good, always won, and were always boys. I could have developed the first two virtues, but becoming a boy was sure to be difficult, if not impossible.”
― Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

“Imagine letting some white woman rename you for her convenience.”
― Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

“His room smelled of cooked grease, Lysol, and age, but his face believed the freshness of his words, and I had no heart nor art to drag him back to the reeking reality of our life and times.”
― Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

“We have a saying among Black Americans which describes Momma's caution. "If you ask a Negro where he's been, he'll tell you where he's going." To understand this important information, it is necessary to know who uses this tatic and on whom it works. If an unaware person is told a part of the truth (it is imperative that the answer embody truth), he is satisfied that his query has been answered. If an aware person (one who himself uses the stratagem) is given an answer which is truthful but bears only slightly if at all on the question, he knows that the information he seeks is of a private nature and will not be handed to him willingly. Thus direct denial, lying and the revelation of personal affairs are avoided.”
― Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

“Every person I knew had a hellish horror of being "called out of his name." It was a dangerous practice to call a Negro anything that could be loosely construed as insulting because of the centuries of their having been called niggers, jigs, dinges, blackbirds, crows, boots and spooks.”
― Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

“There is a time in every man's life when he must push off from the wharf of safety into the sea of chance.”
― Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

“We learned the times tables without understanding their grand principle, simply because we had the capacity and no alternative.”
― Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

“Aunque en el barrio negro siempre había muestras de generosidad, practicarla entrañaba el dolor del sacrificio. Fuera lo que fuese lo que un negro diera a otro, casi seguro que el donante lo necesitaba tan urgentemente como el donatario. Eso hacía que el dar y recibir constituyera entre ellos un intercambio fructífero".”
― Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

“On my way out of the house one morning she said, "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." Another time she reminded me that "God helps those who help themselves." She had a store of aphorisms which she dished out as the occasion demanded.”
― Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

“When I was three and Bailey four, we had arrived in the musty little town, wearing tags on our wrists which instructed----To Whom It May Concern---that we were Marguerite and Bailey Johnson Jr., from Long Beach, California, en route to Stamps, Arkansas, c/o Mrs. Annie Henderson.”
― Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

“If we were a people much given to revealing secrets, we might raise monuments and sacrifice to the memories of our poets, but slavery cured us of that weakness. It may be enough, however, to have it said that we survive in exact relationship to the dedication of our poets”
― Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

“Can’t do” is like “Don’t care.” Neither of them has a home. Translated, that meant there was nothing a person can’t do and there should be nothing a human being didn’t care about.”
― Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

“To be left alone on the tightrope of youthful unknowing is to experience the excruciating beauty of full freedom and the threat of eternal indecision. Few, is any, survive their teens. Most surrender to the vague but murderous pressure of adult conformity. It becomes easier to die and avoid conflicts than to maintain a constant battle with the superior forces of maturity.”
― Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

“It was a little like Switzerland in World War II. Shells were bursting all around me, souls were tortured and I was powerless in the confines of imposed neutrality - hopes were dying.”
― Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

“Momma wouldn't talk right then, but later in the evening I found that my violation lay in using the phrase "by the way". Momma explained that "Jesus was the Way, the Truth and the Light," and anyone who says "by the way" is really saying, "by Jesus," or "by God" and the Lord's name would not be taken in vain in her house.”
― Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

“Momma, knowing Bailey, warned, "Now Ju, be careful you don't slip up on a not true." (Nice people didn't say "lie.")”
― Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

“a big man, who was himself protected by the shield of a bad reputation”
― Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

“Boys? No, rather men who were covered with graves' dust and age without beauty or learning. The ugliness and rottenness of old abominations.”
― Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

“In the evening, when we were alone like that, Uncle Willie didn't stutter or shake or give any indication that he had an "affliction." It seemed that the peace of a day's ending was an assurance that the covenant God made with children, Negroes and the crippled was still in effect.”
― Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

“Never heard the words, despite the thousands of times I had sung them. Never thought they had anything to do with me.
Now I heard, really heard it, for the first time.
While echoes of the song hung in the air, Henry Reed bowed his head, said “Thank you,” and returned to his place in the line.
The tears that slipped down many faces were not wiped away in shame.
We were on top again. As always, again. We survived. I was no longer only a member of the proud graduating class of 1940; I was a proud member of the wonderful, beautiful Negro race.”
― Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

“As I twisted the steering wheel and forced the accelerator to the floor I was controlling Mexico, and might and aloneness and inexperienced youth and Bailey Johnson, Sr., and death and insecurity, and even gravity.”
― Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

“She would have been more surprised than I had she taken me in her arms and wept at losing me. Her world was bordered on all sides with work, duty, religion and "her place." I don't think she ever knew that a deep-brooding love hung over everything she touched.”
― Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

“But what mother and daughter understand each other, or even have the sympathy for each other's lack of understanding?”
― Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings