May 28, 2014.

Author, Poet Maya Angelou Dies

A needle slid into Winston’s arm. Almost in the same instant a blissful, healing warmth spread all through his body. The pain was already half-forgotten. He opened his eyes and looked up gratefully at O’Brien. At sight of the heavy, lined face, so ugly and so intelligent, his heart seemed to turn over. If he could have moved he would have stretched out a hand and laid it on O’Brien’s arm. He had never loved him so deeply as at this moment, and not merely because he had stopped the pain. The old feeling, that at bottom it did not matter whether O’Brien was a friend or an enemy, had come back. O’Brien was a person who could be talked to. Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood. O’Brien had tortured him to the edge of lunacy, and in a little while, it was certain, he would send him to his death. It made no difference. In some sense that went deeper than friendship, they were intimates: somewhere or other, although the actual words might never be spoken, there was a place where they could meet and talk. O’Brien was looking down at him with an expression which suggested that the same thought might be in his own mind. When he spoke it was in an easy, conversational tone.

NEW YORK----Maya Angelou, a modern Renaissance woman who survived the harshest of childhoods to become a force on stage, screen, the printed page and the inaugural dais, has died. She was 86.

"Do you know where you are, Winston?" he said.

Her death was confirmed in a statement issued by Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C., where she had served as a professor of American Studies since 1982.

"I don’t know. I can guess. In the Ministry of Love."

Ms. Angelou's longtime agent of close to 35 years, Helen Brann, also confirmed that the poet died Wednesday morning near her home in Winston-Salem. "She sounded as she always did. She sounded vital and interested in her new book which we were talking about," said Ms. Brann, who spoke to the author Tuesday. "It's a terrific book, a memoir."