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 GORMANWhen you’re someone who’s lived a life where certain resources were scarce, you always feel like abundance is forbidden fruit.
More Amanda Gorman Quotes
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Your daily challenge to not be like a boss, but the boss, in all things you.
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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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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 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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One of my delays was in speech and speech pronunciation, and also the auditory processing issue just means I really struggle as an auditory learner.
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What a day. What a life. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you
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Whenever I listen to songs, I rewrite them in my head.
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I did a lot of sitting back and thinking about what I wanted for myself and what I wanted for my country: more unity, more support for the arts and more opportunities for young writers from marginalized groups.
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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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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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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.
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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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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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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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What’s really funny about being National Youth Poet Laureate is that not everyone even knows it exists.
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If a woman doesn’t give herself permission, who will?
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Truth is to act out of the best of ourselves.
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Through poetry we shall catch the conscience of a nation.
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We know. We believe. And we act, because it is our civic duty.
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We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace and the norms and notions of what just is, isn’t always justice.
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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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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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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 am the daughter of Black writers who are descended from Freedom Fighters who broke their chains and changed the world. They call me.
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I was born early, along with my twin, and a lot of times, for infants, that can lead to learning delays.
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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.
AMANDA GORMAN