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.
AMANDA GORMANI was writing since I can remember – I just didn’t know it was poetry yet, or that writing could be a career.
More Amanda Gorman Quotes
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I am my own best mirror.
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Whenever I listen to songs, I rewrite them in my head.
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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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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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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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My Instagram doesn’t cover my insecurities, my lack of self-confidence, that week I spent crying, there’s a question of whether I should be sharing that online.
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The fight isn’t over – it’s just begun. It’s time to suit up for a battle that might determine the war.
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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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As a public poet, people often don’t see the reality of my life.
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Give us the ballot, and we will no longer have to worry the federal government about our basic rights.
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What a day. What a life. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you
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Poetry is – it’s an art form, but, to me, it’s also a weapon, it’s also an instrument. It’s the ability to make ideas that have been known, felt and said. And that’s a real, I think, type of duty for the poet.
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Poetry is interesting because not everyone is going to become a great poet, but anyone can be, and anyone can enjoy poetry, and it’s this openness, this accessibility of poetry that makes it the language of people.
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My mom wanted to make sure I was prepared to grow up with Black skin in America.
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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.
AMANDA GORMAN