Maya Angelou Quotes About Songs

• My life has been one great big joke, a dance that's walked a song that's spoke, I laugh so hard I almost choke when I think about myself.

  Maya Angelou

  Inspirational, Life, Motivational

  Maya Angelou (2015). “The Complete Poetry”, p.38, Random House

• My people couldn't have survived slavery without having hope that it would get better. And there's some songs from the 19th and 18th century that say [sings], "By and by, by and by, I will lay down, this heavy load." And I mean, so many songs that spoke of hope and understand it better by and by. Amazing songs. So that the slaves, just knowing that he, she, did not have the right legally to walk within one inch away from where the slave owner dictated, and yet the same person, wrote and sang with fervor, "If the lord wants somebody, here am I, send me." It's amazing.

  Maya Angelou

  Song, Mean, Slave Owners

  Source: www.psychologytoday.com

• By love I don't mean indulgence. I do not mean sentimentality. And in this instance, I don't even mean romance. I mean that condition that allowed humans to dream of God.That condition that allowed the "dumb" to write spirituals and Russian songs and Irish lilts. That is love, and it's so much larger than anything I can conceive.

  Maya Angelou

  Dream, Song, Writing

  Interview with Oprah Winfrey, www.oprah.com. December 2000.

• Oh, Black known and unknown poets, how often have your auctioned pains sustained us? Who will compute the lonely nights made less lonely by your songs, or by the empty pots made less tragic by your tales? 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.

  Maya Angelou

  Inspirational, Song, Lonely

• I find in my poetry and prose the rhythms and imagery of the best - I mean, when I'm at my best - of the good Southern black preachers. The lyricism of the spirituals and the directness of gospel songs and the mystery of blues are in my music or in my poetry and prose, or I missed everything.

  Maya Angelou

  Song, Mean, Southern

• I love the song 'I Hope You Dance' by Lee Ann Womack. I was going to write that song, but someone beat me to it.

  Maya Angelou

  Song, Writing, Beats

• I'm a serious aficionada of country music - Reba McEntire, Toby Keith, Montgomery Gentry. I've even written some songs. They haven't done anything of mine yet. But it's only a matter of time.

  Maya Angelou

  Country, Song, Serious

• If you have a song to sing, who are you not to open your mouth and sing to the world?

  Maya Angelou

  Song, World, Mouths

  "Learning From Maya" by Sue Shanahan, www.huffingtonpost.com. June 4, 2014.

• Human beings love poetry. They don't even know it sometimes... whether they're the songs of Bono, or the songs of Justin Bieber... they're listening to poetry.

  Maya Angelou

  Song, Listening, Sometimes

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