The Life Lessons Maya Angelou Taught Oprah

**Oprah Winfrey** (0:00)
I've said this many times before that my greatest lessons have been articulated by you. I had to learn them myself, but they were articulated by you.

**Maya Angelou** (0:10)
What you can do is approve of yourself for living.

**Oprah Winfrey** (0:14)
Approve of yourself.

**Maya Angelou** (0:16)
For being alive.

**Oprah Winfrey** (0:17)
For being alive.

**Maya Angelou** (0:18)
My belief is you never can leave home. You take it with you.
Everywhere you go.
So my past is my present.

**Oprah Winfrey** (0:27)
And everything that's happened in your past is what makes you who you are right this moment.

**Maya Angelou** (0:30)
That's right.

**Oprah Winfrey** (0:31)
One of the most important lessons I ever learned from you and that is when people show you who they are, believe them.

**Maya Angelou** (0:38)
Yes. Absolutely.

**Oprah Winfrey** (0:40)
Well, you know, when you know better, you do better.

**Maya Angelou** (0:42)
That's the ticket.

**Oprah Winfrey** (0:43)
That's the ticket. I've recited that to myself many times. I come as one, but I stand as 10,000.

**Maya Angelou** (0:49)
And that's it.

**Oprah Winfrey** (0:50)
Yeah. You girl. The force of that.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:52)
That's it.

**Maya Angelou** (0:52)
The force of that.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:53)
Yes, ma'am.

**Oprah Winfrey** (0:57)
A happy hello to you. I thank you for taking the time to be with me here on The Oprah Podcast. One of my greatest mentors, mother, sister, friend in my life, Dr. Maya Angelou, passed 12 years ago. And I know you all feel this sometimes, too, for people who are close to you. It's still hard to believe it's been that long. Maya taught me more, I believe, than any other single human being that I knew on the planet. I learned so many life lessons from her.
Things that she actually said, but also how she lived and moved through the world. I think she is one of the reasons why I have embraced aging with such enthusiasm because she would say to me, girl, I'm telling you the 80s are hot. So I'm still waiting to experience that.
I learned so many lessons from her. I could write a book about it. I know she had the same impact on so many of you. I first met her in my early 20s. I was working in Baltimore and I had convinced my station news director that she was worthy of being on the evening news. They didn't even know who she was. She was speaking at Morgan State University. I asked them if I could go and cover her and create a story from it.
I met her backstage and I said, Ms. Angelou, if you would just give me five minutes of your time, five minutes of your time, I would really appreciate it for this interview. She agreed and I held my hand out. I had a little Timex watch and I watched that. Clock to make sure I didn't go one second over the five minutes that she gave me. When we were done, she turned to me and she said, who are you, girl?
I was forever taken by her. Our bond was immediate, it was profound, and I would go on to interview her countless times throughout the years. And when all of the craziness and disruption of life sometimes would creep in, I would call her and I often go back to the lessons I learned from Maya Angelou to remind myself to get centered in who I really am. And many times when things still occur, I think, oh, what would Maya do? What would Maya be doing in this time? It's a blessing to me that I have so many of those conversations on camera. So for this podcast, I want to share some of those great lessons with you. Because my intention right now is to do what Maya said in her poem to grandmother. She said, when you learn, teach. When you get, give. So my intention is to share the wisdom I've learned over the years, to offer you a breathing space, a thoughtful place beneath all the noise of the world, starting with Maya's belief in the power of words. I got this lesson many times from her.

**Maya Angelou** (4:18)
Words are things.

**SPEAKER_4** (4:19)
I'm convinced.

**Maya Angelou** (4:22)
You must be careful about the words you use, or the words you allow to be used in your house. In the Old Testament, we are told in Genesis that, in the beginning, was the word.
And the word was God, and the word was with God. That's in Genesis. Words are things.

**SPEAKER_4** (4:44)
You must be careful.

**Maya Angelou** (4:46)
Careful about calling people out of their names, using racial pejoratives and sexual pejoratives and all that ignorance. Don't do that.