Athen P

Add friend
Sign in to Goodreads to learn more about Athen.


Loading...
Maya Angelou
“I had given up some youth for knowledge, but my gain was more valuable than the loss”
Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Maya Angelou
“It was awful to be Negro and have no control over my life. It was brutal to be young and already trained to sit quietly and listen to charges brought against my color with no chance of defense. We should all be dead. I thought I should like to see us all dead, one on top of the other. A pyramid of flesh with the whitefolks on the bottom, as the broad base, then the Indians with their silly tomahawks and teepees and wigwams and treaties, the Negroes with their mops and recipes and cotton sacks and spirituals sticking out of their mouths. The Dutch children should all stumble in their wooden shoes and break their necks. The French should choke to death on the Louisiana Purchase (1803) while silkworms ate all the Chinese with their stupid pigtails. As a species, we were an abomination. All of us.”
Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Janet Fitch
“You must find a boy your own age. Someone mild and beautiful to be your lover. Someone who will tremble for your touch, offer you a marguerite by its long stem with his eyes lowered. Someone whose fingers are a poem.”
Janet Fitch, White Oleander

Maya Angelou
“She comprehended the perversity of life, that in the struggle lies the joy.”
Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Maya Angelou
“People whose history and future were threatened each day by extinction considered that it was only by divine intervention that they were able to live at all. I find it interesting that the meanest life, the poorest existence, is attributed to God's will, but as human beings become more affluent, as their living standard and style begin to ascend the material scale, God descends the scale of responsibility at a commensurate speed.”
Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

year in books

Athen hasn't connected with their friends on Goodreads, yet.


Interview with the Vampire by Anne RiceThe Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
Best Books Ever
74,928 books — 277,940 voters


Favorite Genres



Polls voted on by Athen

Lists liked by Athen