Quotations from I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings — King County Library System (2024)

“Her portrait is a biblical study of life in the midst of death.”~James Baldwin

“I was going to look like one of the sweet little white girls who were everybody’s dream of what was right with the world.”~Maya Angelou

“If growing up is painful for the Southern Black girl, being aware of her displacement is the rust on the razor that threatens the throat. It is an unnecessary insult.”~ Maya Angelou

“My pretty Black brother was my Kingdom Come.”~ Maya Angelou

“I wanted to throw a handful of black pepper in their faces, to throw lye on them, to scream that they were dirty, scummy peckerwoods, but I knew I was a clearly imprisoned behind the scene as the actors outside were confined to their…

“I swear to God, I rather you have a good mine than a cute behind.”~Uncle Tommy

“You must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy.”~Mrs. Flowers

“I was liked, and what a difference it made.”~ Maya Angelou

“Whitefolks mouths were most in general loose and their words were an abomination before Christ.~Momma

“Lost before birth and unrecovered since.”~ Maya Angelou

"I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. That some people, unable to go to school, were more educated and more intelligent than college professors."

"This book is dedicated toMY SON, GUY JOHNSON, AND ALL THE STRONG BLACK BIRDSOF PROMISE who defy the odds and godsand sing their songs"

"The Black female is assaulted in her tender years by all those common forces of nature at the same time that she is caught in the tripartite crossfire of masculine prejudice, white illogical hate and Black lack of power.The fact that the…

"He was away in a mystery, locked in the enigma that young Southern Black boys start to unravel, start to try to unravel, from seven years old to death. The humorless puzzle of inequality and hate. His experience raised the question of…

"Until we reached the pond the pain was my world, an aura that haloed me for three feet around. Crossing the bridge into whitefolks' country, pieces of sanity pushed themselves forward. I had to stop moaning and start walking straight. The…

"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."

"The white kids were going to have a chance to become Galileos and Madame Curies and Edisons and Gauguins, and our boys (the girls weren't even in on it) would try to be Jesse Owenses and Joe Louises.Owens and the Brown Bomber were great…

"People whose history and future were threatened each day by extinction considered that it was only by divine intervention that they were able to live at all."

"Children's talent to endure stems from their ignorance of alternatives."

"I could never put my finger on her realness ... But what mother and daughter understand each other, or even have the sympathy for each other's lack of understanding?"

"Momma intended to teach Bailey and me to use the paths of life that she and her generation and all the Negroes gone before had found, and found to be safe ones. She didn't cotton to the idea that whitefolks could be talked to at all…

"'Thou shall not be dirty' and 'Thou shall not be impudent' were the two commandments of Grandmother Henderson upon which hung our total salvation.Each night in the bitterest winter we were forced to wash faces, arms, necks, legs and…

"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…

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.

[When I was 8 years old] my mother would take me in to sleep with her, in the large bed with Mr. Freeman. ...[he] pulled me to him and put his hand between my legs. ...He threw back the covers and his "thing" stood up like a brown ear of…