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.
AMANDA GORMANYou 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.
More Amanda Gorman Quotes
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Whenever I listen to songs, I rewrite them in my head.
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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.
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Poetry and language are often at the heartbeat of movements for change.
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I am my own best mirror.
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As a public poet, people often don’t see the reality of my life.
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When they tell you to go back to where you come from, tell them proudly that this is where you come from.
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Poetry is the lens we use to interrogate the history we stand on and the future we stand for.
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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.
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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.
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I think it made me all that much stronger of a writer when you have to teach yourself how to say words from scratch.
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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.
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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.
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I love Black poets. I love that as a Black girl, I get to participate in that legacy. So that’s Yusef Komunyakaa, Sonia Sanchez, Tracy K. Smith, Phillis Wheatley.
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When you are learning through poetry how to speak English, it lends to a great understanding of sound, of pitch, of pronunciation, so I think of my speech impediment not as a weakness or a disability, but as one of my greatest strengths.
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What’s really funny about being National Youth Poet Laureate is that not everyone even knows it exists.
AMANDA GORMAN







