Amanda Gorman

“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.”

“Poetry has never been the language of barriers, it's always been the language of bridges.”

“It's this weird binary where I'm getting media images and narratives thrown at me all the time through something I hold in my hand, and that's never happened to other generations. But also with this little object in my hand, I have the ability to document police brutality, or post about the Syrian conflict on Twitter.”

“Poetry and language are often at the heartbeat of movements for change.”

“This is a long, long, faraway goal, but 2036 I am running for office to be president of the United States. So you can put that in your iCloud calendar.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Most of my life I was particularly terrified of speaking up, because I had a speech impediment, which made it difficult to pronounce certain letters, sounds, and I felt like I was fine writing on the page, but once I got on stage, I was worried my words might jumble and stumble.”

“One: whose shoulders do you stand on? And two: what do you stand for? These are two questions that I always begin my poetry workshops with students because at times, poetry can seem like this dead art form for old white men who just seem like they were born to be old, like, you know, Benjamin Button or something.”

“That's kind of the challenging thing about writing an inaugural poem. You're speaking to everyone, but you don't also want to speak for everyone.”

“I was obsessed with everything and anything; I wanted to learn everything, to read everything, to do everything. I was constantly on sensory overload. I'd hoard dozens of books in my second-grade cubby, and literally try to read two at a time, side by side.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“I am the daughter of Black writers who are descended from Freedom Fighters who broke their chains and changed the world. They call me.”

“We've learned that quiet isn't always peace and the norms and notions of what just is, isn't always justice.”

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