If I am not good to myself, how can I expect anyone else to be good to me?
Maya AngelouRead
I've read everything Thomas Wolfe ever wrote; my brother and I memorized whole chapters of 'You Can't Go Home Again' and 'Look Homeward, Angel.'
Interpretation
What this quote means
Maya Angelou expresses her deep appreciation for Thomas Wolfe's literary work and the emotional connection to her family through reading.
In this quote, Maya Angelou reflects on the profound impact that the works of Thomas Wolfe had on her life and her relationship with her brother. By memorizing passages from his books, they forged a personal connection to the themes of belonging and the bittersweet nature of returning home, suggesting that literature can shape our identities and familial bonds.
Themes
LiteratureReadingFamilyIdentityBelonging
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about the importance of literature in shaping our lives, this quote can be a poignant illustration.
More from Maya Angelou
All quotes βI 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 commensurate speed.
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The white American man makes the white American woman maybe not superfluous but just a little kind of decoration. Not really important to turning around the wheels of the state. Well the black American woman has never been able to feel that way. No black American man at any time in our history in the United States has been able to feel that he didn't need that black woman right against him, shoulder to shoulder-in that cotton field, on the auction block, in the ghetto, wherever.
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I know that I'm not the easiest person to live with. The challenge I put on myself is so great that the person I live with feels himself challenged. I bring a lot to bear, and I don't know how not to.
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I think Clinton, after getting into office and into Washington, was shocked at being bludgeoned. So he spent time trying to be all things to all people - one way guaranteed not to be successful or respected in a lion's den. You can't just play around with all those big cats - you've got to take somebody on.
Maya AngelouRead
Similar quotes
You have started the book with this bubble over your head that contains a cathedral full of fire - that contains a novel so vast and great and penetrating and bright and dark that it will put all other novels ever written to shame. And then, as you get towards the end, you begin to realise, no, it's just this book.
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the association of children and fairy-stories is an accident of our domestic history. Fairy-stories have in the modern lettered world been relegated to the βnursery,β as shabby or old-fashioned furniture is relegated to the play-room, primarily because the adults do not want it, and do not mind if it is misused.
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The way to read a fairy tale is to throw yourself in.
W. H. AudenRead
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