Amanda Gorman Quotes

Words matter, for
Language is an ark.
Yes,
Language is an art,
An articulate artifact.
Language is a life craft.
Yes,
Language is a life raft.

When day comes, we ask ourselves:
Where can we find light
In this never-ending shade?
The loss we carry, a sea we must wade.
We braved the belly of the beast,
We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace,
And the norms and notions of what ‘just is’
Isn’t always justice.
And yet the dawn is ours before we knew it,
Somehow, we do it.
Somehow, we’ve weathered and witnessed
A nation that isn’t broken, but simply unfinished.
We, the successors of a country and a time
where a skinny Black girl, descended from slaves
and raised by a single mother,
can dream of becoming president
only to find herself reciting for one.

We wrap our arms around ourselves, as if we can possibly hold the whole of who we are within us — everything that makes us this unearthly speck we are. Perhaps tomorrow cannot wait to be today.

In this one life, we, like our joy, are fleeting but certain, abstract & absolute, ghosts who glow & glow.

Disease is physiological death, Loneliness is a social one, Where the old We collapses like a lung.

We will rebuild, reconcile and recover in every known nook of our nation, in every corner called our country our people diverse and beautiful will emerge battered and beautiful. When day comes, we step out of the shade aflame and unafraid. The new dawn blooms as we free it. For there is always light. If only we’re brave enough to see it. If only we’re brave enough to be it.

When this ends, we’ll smile sweetly, finally seeing In testing times, we became the best of beings.

But the point of protest isn't winning;
It's holding fast to the promise of freedom,
Even when fast victory is not promised.

But I am hunting for something — anything — to give me some bearing, since I am, metaphorically speaking, at sea, having cut myself off from the comfort and predictability of my own language — my own meaning.

Our whole year swallowed, As if by a massive maw. What else could stomach Our hearts, huge with hurt, Everyone & everything hell

The densest despair takes
Us to no ordinary joy.
Sometimes diving
Into the deep inside us
Is the only way
We rise above it.

The funerals without families,
Weddings in waiting,
The births in isolation.
Let no one again
Have to begin, love, or end, alone.

We destroy everything good just so it will not shame us. How easy it is to both leave & love this place.

A smile around here is like a sudden star, undead & loaded. To live only to die is to be doomed but redeemable. All we know so far is we are so far From what we know.

Like light, we can’t be broken, even when we bend.

We lay down our arms
so we can reach out our arms
to one another
We seek harm to none and harmony for all
Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true:
That even as we grieved, we grew
That even as we hurt, we hoped
That even as we tired, we tried