“I think it made me all that much stronger of a writer when you have to teach yourself how to say words from scratch.”

Poetry has never been the language of barriers, it’s always been the language of bridges.

Truth is to act out of the best of ourselves.

I grew up at this incredibly odd intersection in Los Angeles, where it felt like the black ‘hood met black elegance met white gentrification met Latin culture met wetlands.

What contributed to my writing early on is how my mom encouraged it. She kept the TV off because she wanted my siblings and I to be engaged and active. So we made forts, put on plays, musicals, and I wrote like crazy.

I don’t want it to be something that becomes a cage, where to be a successful Black girl, you have to be Amanda Gorman and go to Harvard. I want someone to eventually disrupt the model I have established.

You don’t have to be a poet, you don’t have to be a politician or be in the White House to make an impact with your words. We all have this capacity to find solutions for the future.

Poetry is the lens we use to interrogate the history we stand on and the future we stand for.

If a woman doesn’t give herself permission, who will?

No matter how you say it, the hill we climb is a hill we climb together.

When you’re someone who’s lived a life where certain resources were scarce, you always feel like abundance is forbidden fruit.

What a day. What a life. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you

When you have to teach yourself how to say sounds, when you have to be highly concerned about pronunciation, it gives you a certain awareness of sonics, of the auditory experience.

It was so incredible meeting Lady Gaga. I mean I’m gaga for Gaga, literally. We kind of just each flew to each other like magnets after the ceremony ended and we were both just crying and hugging.

Poetry is – it’s an art form, but, to me, it’s also a weapon, it’s also an instrument. It’s the ability to make ideas that have been known, felt and said. And that’s a real, I think, type of duty for the poet.

We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace and the norms and notions of what just is, isn’t always justice.

It wasn’t until I was named Youth Poet Laureate of L.A. in high school though that I officially began calling myself a poet. I just always loved writing, period.

Right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.

The strong man is strongest when alone.

In a just cause the weak will beat the strong.

God was finally going to believe in a man both good and strong, but good and strong are still two different men.

Even the weak become strong when they are united.

All men have an emotion to kill; when they strongly dislike someone they involuntarily wish he was dead. I have never killed any one, but I have read some obituary notices with great satisfaction.

The truth is always the strongest argument.

Cancer is like a cockroach. It just comes back stronger. I’m tearing apart the immune system of the cockroach and seeing how it ticks. I’ve opened up my own pathology center.