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

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.

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.

We’re just some birds in this fucked up nest of a world.

Good manners is the art of making those people easy with whom we converse. Whoever makes the fewest people uneasy is the best bred in the room.

If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it, and you will even come to believe it yourself.

Lose who may-I still can say, Those who win heaven, blest are they!

The problem, as I see it, is that you’ve been told and not told. You’ve been told, but none of you really understand, and I dare say, some people are quite happy to leave it that way.

A great stench will come from Lausanne, but they will not know its origin; they will put out all people from distant places, fire seen in the sky, a foreign nation defeated.

Happiness is being at peace, being with loved ones, being comfortable but most of all, it’s having those loved ones.

The only people who have quick answers don’t have the responsibility of making the decisions.