My mom wanted to make sure I was prepared to grow up with Black skin in America.
AMANDA GORMANWhenever I listen to songs, I rewrite them in my head.
More Amanda Gorman Quotes
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See the line where the sky meets the sea.
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It wasn’t until I was named Youth Poet Laureate of L.A. in high school though that I officially began calling myself a poet. I just always loved writing, period.
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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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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 my own best mirror.
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Whenever I listen to songs, I rewrite them in my head.
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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.
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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.
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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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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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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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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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If a woman doesn’t give herself permission, who will?
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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.
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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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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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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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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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Poetry has never been the language of barriers, it’s always been the language of bridges.
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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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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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The oration of poetry, I consider to be its own art form and tradition.
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As a public poet, people often don’t see the reality of my life.
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I was writing since I can remember – I just didn’t know it was poetry yet, or that writing could be a career.
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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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Give us the ballot, and we will no longer have to worry the federal government about our basic rights.
AMANDA GORMAN