“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.”

Whenever I listen to songs, I rewrite them in my head.

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.

I don’t think I could do a reality show, no.

A retentive memory may be a good thing, but the ability to forget is the true token of greatness.

Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle.

The most important thing a writer can have [is] the ability to live with the constant loneliness and a strong sense of revulsion for the banalities of everyday socializing.

Vitality shows in not only the ability to persist but the ability to start over.

It is not merely enough to have the ability to be persistant, you must also have the ability to start over.

No one in the world was ever you before, with your particular gifts and abilities and possibilities.

Patience is the ability to accept trouble, suffering, delay without getting angry or upset, I feel like if you can master patience you can master anything.