Amanda Gorman Quotes

Amanda Gorman

Profession : Poet

Birth : March 7, 1998

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.

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.

Amanda Gorman

Whenever I listen to songs, I rewrite them in my head.

Amanda Gorman

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.

Amanda Gorman

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

Amanda Gorman

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 Gorman

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.

Amanda Gorman

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.

Amanda Gorman

I try to approach reading in front of millions of people as I would reading in somebody's living room.

Amanda Gorman

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

Amanda Gorman

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.

Amanda Gorman

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.

Amanda Gorman

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.

Amanda Gorman

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.

Amanda Gorman

What's really funny about being National Youth Poet Laureate is that not everyone even knows it exists.

Amanda Gorman

I'm a student at Harvard University, and currently work as the United States Youth Poet Laureate, a community organizer, and an activist.

Amanda Gorman

I was born early, along with my twin, and a lot of times, for infants, that can lead to learning delays.

Amanda Gorman

I was writing since I can remember - I just didn't know it was poetry yet, or that writing could be a career.

Amanda Gorman

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.

Amanda Gorman

As a public poet, people often don't see the reality of my life.

Amanda Gorman