Maya Angelou's quotes we'll always remember

Maya Angelou, who rose from poverty, segregation and the harshest of childhoods to become a force on stage, screen, the printed page and the inaugural dais, has died. She was 86. (Source: AP)

She remained close enough to the Clintons. In 2008, she supported Hillary Rodham Clinton's candidacy over the ultimately successful run of the country's first black president, Barack Obama. But a few days before Obama's inauguration, she was clearly overjoyed. She told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette she would be watching it on television "somewhere between crying and praying and being grateful and laughing when I see faces I know". (Source: AP)

Angelou was little known outside the theatrical community until "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" which might not have happened if James Baldwin hadn't persuaded Angelou, still grieving over King's death, to attend a party at Jules Feiffer's house. Feiffer was so taken by Angelou that he mentioned her to Random House editor Bob Loomis, who persuaded her to write a book. (Source: AP)

At age 9, she was writing poetry. By 17, she was a single mother. In her early 20s, she danced at a strip joint, ran a brothel, was married (to Enistasious Tosh Angelos, her first of three husbands) and then divorced. By her mid-20s, she was performing at the Purple Onion in San Francisco, where she shared billing with another future star, Phyllis Diller. She spent a few days with Billie Holiday, who was kind enough to sing a lullaby to Angelou's son Guy, surly enough to heckle her off the stage and astute enough to tell her: "You're going to be famous. But it won't be for singing." (Source: AP)

Angelou's memoir was occasionally attacked, for seemingly opposite reasons. In a 1999 essay in Harper's, author Francine Prose criticized "Caged Bird" as "manipulative" melodrama. Meanwhile, Angelou's passages about her rape and teen pregnancy have made it a perennial on the American Library Association's list of works that draw complaints from parents and educators. (Source: AP)

"I thought that it was a mild book. There's no profanity," Angelou told the AP. "It speaks about surviving, and it really doesn't make ogres of many people. I was shocked to find there were people who really wanted it banned, and I still believe people who are against the book, have never read the book." (Source: AP)

After renaming herself Maya Angelou for the stage ("Maya" was a childhood nickname), she toured in "Porgy and Bess" and Jean Genet's "The Blacks" and danced with Alvin Ailey. She worked as a coordinator for the civil rights group Southern Christian Leadership Council, and lived for years in Egypt and Ghana, where she met Malcolm X and remained close to him until his assassination, in 1965. Three years later, she was helping King organize the Poor People's March in Memphis, Tennessee, where the civil rights leader was slain on Angelou's 40th birthday. (Source: AP)

Angelou appeared on several TV programs, notably the groundbreaking 1977 miniseries "Roots". She was nominated for a Tony Award in 1973 for her appearance in the play "Look Away". (Source: AP)

She directed the film "Down in the Delta", about a drug-wrecked woman who returns to the home of her ancestors in the Mississippi Delta. (Source: AP)

She won three Grammys for her spoken-word albums and in 2013 received an honorary National Book Award for her contributions to the literary community. (Source: AP)