He was right. I would only eke out a living as a singer. The limited success I had, which Bailey recognized, stemmed from the fact that I didn't love… - Maya Angelou

If the heart of Africa remained elusive, my search for it had brought me closer to understanding myself and other human beings. The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned. It impels mighty ambitions and dangerous capers. We amass great fortunes at the cost of our souls, or risk our lives in drug dens from London’s Soho, to San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury. We shout in Baptist churches, wear yarmulkes and wigs and argue even the tiniest points in the Torah, or worship the sun and refuse to kill cows for the starving. Hoping that by doing these things, home will find us acceptable or failing that, that we will forget our awful yearning for it.

You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have. (1982; quoted in the Introduction by Jeffrey M. Elliot)

The race of man is suffering And I can hear the moan, ‘Cause nobody, But nobody Can make it out here alone.