The Great Maya Angelou:

"I've been very fortunate… I seem to have a kind of blinkers. I just do not allow too many negatives to soil me. I'm very blessed. I have looked quite strange in most of the places I have lived in my life, the stages, spaces I've moved through. I of course grew up with my grandmother: my grandmother's people and my brother are very very black, very lovely. And my mother's people were very very fair. I was always sort of in between. I was too tall. My voice was too heavy. My attitude was too arrogant – or tenderhearted. So if I had accepted what people told me I looked like as a negative yes, then I would be dead. But I accepted it and I thought, well, aren't I the lucky one...

I've always had the feeling that life loves the liver of it. You must live and life will be good to you, give you experiences. They may not all be that pleasant, but nobody promised you a rose garden. But more than likely if you do dare, what you get are the marvelous returns. Courage is probably the most important of the virtues, because without courage you cannot practice any of the other virtues, you can't say against a murderous society, I oppose your murdering. You got to have courage to do so. I seem to have known that a long time and found great joy in it."