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

One of the most rewarding moments of my career is when I’m speaking to a child who tells me they have the same speech impediment that I had to overcome and that they’re going to keep writing or sharing their voice after hearing my story.

What’s really funny about being National Youth Poet Laureate is that not everyone even knows it exists.

My mom wanted to make sure I was prepared to grow up with Black skin in America.

I am my own best mirror.

I try to approach reading in front of millions of people as I would reading in somebody’s living room.

Your daily challenge to not be like a boss, but the boss, in all things you.

Let each dawn find us courageous, brought closer, heeding the lights before the fight is over.

Give us the ballot, and we will no longer have to worry the federal government about our basic rights.

I think we run into issues when our online brands are not rooted in who we are, and I think we need to have explicit discussions with ourselves about who we want to be, what we want to represent, and how we want to express that.

I close my eyes and I am with this army of young women standing in a line and I imagine us walking forward together.

To hone my voice, I read everything, from books to cereal boxes, three times: once for fun, the second time to learn something new about the writing craft, and the third time was to improve that piece.

The fight isn’t over – it’s just begun. It’s time to suit up for a battle that might determine the war.

I am the daughter of Black writers who are descended from Freedom Fighters who broke their chains and changed the world. They call me.

See the line where the sky meets the sea.

Poetry and language are often at the heartbeat of movements for change.

As a young black woman, I notice at times in the mainstream media framing of the ‘me too’ movement you see a white female face or a white male face, and that type of questioning and interrogation needs to happen.

Everybody’s life has some mythical quality. You struggle against obstacles, you fight to get to a higher level and there are great loves.

The road to Lourdes is littered with crutches, but not one wooden leg.

No struggle can ever succeed without women participating side by side with men.

For mass struggles, nonviolence is essential.

Struggle is a never ending process. Freedom is never really won, you earn it and win it in every generation.

To find love in Paris you must go down among those classes where the absence of education and of vanity, and the struggle for bare necessities, have allowed more energy to survive.

Men are not put into this world to go the path of ease, they are put into this world to go the path of pain and struggle.

A new dynasty is never founded without a struggle. Blood makes good manure.