I have to interweave my poetry with purpose. For me, that purpose is to help people, and to shed a light on issues that have far too long been in the darkness.
AMANDA GORMANAs 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.
More Amanda Gorman Quotes
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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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I try to approach reading in front of millions of people as I would reading in somebody’s living room.
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If a woman doesn’t give herself permission, who will?
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Poetry has never been the language of barriers, it’s always been the language of bridges.
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I close my eyes and I am with this army of young women standing in a line and I imagine us walking forward together.
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No matter how you say it, the hill we climb is a hill we climb together.
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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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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.
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When you’re someone who’s lived a life where certain resources were scarce, you always feel like abundance is forbidden fruit.
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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.
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I am my own best mirror.
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We know. We believe. And we act, because it is our civic duty.
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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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Writing wasn’t just a form of expression. It was a form of pathology by embarking on spoken word over and over and over again and reciting my poems.
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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 GORMAN







