When working, Maya usually researches and writes about 16 hours a day, but it's always been difficult for her to write at home. To solve that problem, Maya rents a tiny hotel room. Waking about 4:00 am, she goes to the hotel about 7:00 am and works at least six hours... In the hotel room, Maya keeps a dictionary, a thesaurus, a Bible, and a pack of cards. An occasional game of solitaire keeps her hands busy while she thinks. There's a bed in the room, but she never rests on it.Maya writes longhand with a pen on lined, yellow legal pads. Sometimes her eyelids swell closed from fatigue and her back aches. At 64, her arthritis is bothersome.*
When I pick up the pen to write I have to scrape across those scars to sharpen the point.**
Maya Angelou, 4 April 1928 - 28 May 2014 (aged 86)
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*Maya Angelou by L. Patricia Kite, 1999
**Maya Angelou to Bill Moyers, PBS interview, quoted in I know why the Caged Bird Sings: A Casebook by Joanne M. Braxton, 1999.
Photo from Eye On Life Magazine