"Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told:
    'I'm with you kid. Let's go.'"
                                                    – Maya Angelou

About Maya Angelou

American poet and author Maya Angelou is best known for her autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. She was born in St. Louis in 1928 and grew up in rural Arkansas. Due to her activism, Martin Luther King asked her to take a leadership position in his organization. In 1993, at President Clinton's request, she wrote and performed a poem at his inauguration. She has also directed films and appeared on television. She teaches at Wake Forest University.

                         ONE DEGREE
  At 211 degrees, water is hot.
  At 212 degrees, it boils.
  And with boiling water, comes steam.
  And steam can power a locomotive.
  One extra degree...makes all the difference.
  And, one extra degree of effort in life  
    separates the good from the great!

"There ain't nothing from the outside can lick any of us."
– Margaret Mitchell

About Margaret Mitchell

Margaret Mitchell wrote just one book, the immensely successful Civil War novel, Gone With the Wind, which she wrote while convalescing with a broken ankle, basing it on tales her relatives had told her. She then put the book away until a publisher asked if she had ever written a novel. After giving him the manuscript, she got cold feet and asked for it back, but he'd already begun reading. The book still sells more than 200,000 copies a year. She was born in Atlanta in 1900 and died in 1949.

"There are two primary choices in life; 
  to accept conditions as they exist, or
  accept the responsibility for changing them."