“But as for the future, I foresee a world which is more creative, more open, more loving, more ecologically friendly, more honest about its history and progress, and I think a lot of those contributions will be made by young people.”

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.

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.

The oration of poetry, I consider to be its own art form and tradition.

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.

Poetry has never been the language of barriers, it’s always been the language of bridges.

Truth is to act out of the best of ourselves.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Poetry is the lens we use to interrogate the history we stand on and the future we stand for.

If a woman doesn’t give herself permission, who will?

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

I think it made me all that much stronger of a writer when you have to teach yourself how to say words from scratch.

When you’re someone who’s lived a life where certain resources were scarce, you always feel like abundance is forbidden fruit.

What a day. What a life. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you

To our girls, the name father is another name for what we created, love.

In the veins of poets flows ink, with which they create words for eternity. When they die a part of their souls will still stay alive in their poetry.

The more I study nature, the more I stand amazed at the work of the Creator.

God has, in fact, written two books, not just one. Of course, we are all familiar with the first book he wrote, namely Scripture. But he has written a second book called creation.

Cultural identity; warped and changed. Each of you thinks the other is to blame, It’s created this way, yet we all play a role. We could stop it today if we felt the truth in our souls.

Perception is the paintbrush. The reality, the canvas. You are the artist. Create purposefully.

I hear people say: this person is cool and this person is not cool. People are cool, man has never invented anything as awesome as an actual person, but sometimes we value the objects we create over life itself.

I have the space and liberty to create.