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Anger vs Bitterness - Maya Angelou - Get Angry and Get Moving

You must not be bitter.  That's all. ... Bitterness is like cancer.  It eats upon the host.  It doesn't do anything to the object of its displeasure.  So use anger.

Quote from Maya Angelou, Grammy winner, author, teacher



I wanted a quote about anger.  But most of the stuff was platitudes about how anger is bad.  Goodreads has, at this writing, a list of 2067 quotes on anger, mostly blah.  But snuggled between the trite and the wallpapers and the printed napkins was Maya Angelou.  And release the hounds for the hunt for sourcing begins!

The quote that caught my eye: "But anger is like fire.  It burns all clean."  The full quote is from the Jeffrey M Elliot book Conversations with Maya Angelou (1989):


Bitterness is a different word.  Anger.  Bitterness is like cancer.  It eats upon the host.  But anger is like fire.  It burns all clean.  

If you want to read it the book, you can get borrow it from Archive.org (I just returned it) and go to page 220.  The context was a discussion on the effect of her mother abandoning her.

But Maya brought it up again with in an interview with Dave Chappelle for "Iconoclast." And this time, the context was about the "8 or 9 assassinations" during the Civil Rights Era:

You must not be bitter. That's all.  Let me show you why.  Bitterness is like cancer.  It eats upon the host.  It doesn't do anything to the object of its displeasure.  So use anger.  Yes.  You write it. You paint it.  You dance it. You march it.  You seize it.  You vote it.  You do everything about it.  You talk it.  Never stop talking it.



I like her distinction between ANGER and BITTERNESS.  Collapsing bitterness into anger blurs the two while separating them out helps you address your feelings, motivations, and future direction concerning the wellspring of ire.

I'll use the anger to stay in motion and, about the bitterness ... well I'll figure that out at a different time.  And maybe someone can explain, more artfully than I think I have to the ability, what Maya meant by the phrase "It burns all clean." 

Gratitudes:  Printers, wireless keyboards, and potted plants.

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