Does anyone know the exact quotation?

Question

Maya Angelou (at some college's commencement)
If it's true that these are the best years of your life, then I feel sorry for you, because there is nothing more satisfying than true adulthood.

Answer 1

It was actually Toni Morrison
“Be Your Own Story .”
Commencement address at Wellesley College
Wellesley, Massachusetts USA
May 28, 2004


One more flawless article of clothing, one more elaborate toy, the truly perfect diet, the harmless but necessary drug, the almost final elective surgery, the ultimate cosmetic-all designed to maintain hunger for stasis. While children are being eroticized into adults, adults are being exoticized into eternal juvenilia. I know that happiness has been the real, if covert, target of your labors here, your choices of companions, of the profession that you will enter. You deserve it and I want you to gain it, everybody should.

But if that's all you have on your mind, then you do have my sympathy, and if these are indeed the best years of your life, you do have my condolences because there is nothing, believe me, more satisfying, more gratifying than true adulthood.

The adulthood that is the span of life before you. The process of becoming one is not inevitable. Its achievement is a difficult beauty, an intensely hard won glory, which commercial forces and cultural vapidity should not be permitted to deprive you of.

Answer 2

Toni Morrison
Author
Wellesley, Massachusetts

Original publication: June 6, 2004

But if it's true that this is the best time of your life, then you have my condolences. Because you'll want to remain here, stuck in these so-called best years, never maturing, wanting only to look, to feel and be the adolescent that whole industries are devoted to forcing you to remain. One more flawless article of clothing, one more elaborate toy, the truly perfect diet, the harmless but necessary drug, the almost final elective surgery, the ultimate cosmetic all designed to maintain hunger for stasis. While children are being eroticized into adults, adults are being exoticized into eternal juvenilia. There is nothing more satisfying, more gratifying than true adulthood. http://www.mville.edu/News/media_jun04_commence.HTML

http://www.google.com/search?q=If%20it's%20true%20that%20these%20are%20the%20best%20years%20of%20your%20life%2C%20then%20I%20feel%20sorry%20for%20you%2C%20because%20there%20is%20nothing%20more%20satisfying%20than%20true%20adulthood.&sourceid=groowe&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

http://www.google.com/search?q=Maya%20Angelou%20graduation%20quotation&sourceid=groowe&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

Make it a great day!

Answer 3

you are right, but then you know alot of people dont keep their highschool friends. Its usually your college buddies that you have for a lifetime.