Amanda Gorman Quotes

American poet and activist

Amanda Gorman (born 7 March 1998) is an American poet and social activist. She published the poetry book The One for Whom Food Is Not Enough in 2015, and became the first National Youth Poet Laureate in 2017. She studied sociology at Harvard College, and graduated cum laude as a member of Phi Beta Kappa. She received worldwide attention with her recitation of her poem "The Hill We Climb" written for the inauguration of US President Joe Biden.

From: Wikiquote (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Alternative Names: Amanda S. C. Gorman

From Wikidata (CC0)

The crescent moon, The night’s lucent lesion. We are felled oaks beneath it, Branches full of empty. Look closer. What we share is more Than what we’ve shed.

Life is not what is promised, But what is sought. These bones, not what is found, But what we’ve fought. Our truth, not what we said, But what we thought. Our lesson, all we have taken & all we have brought.

We do not hope for no reason.
Hope is the reason for itself.
We don't care for our beloveds
For any specific, singular logic,
But, rather, for the whole of them.
That is to say,
Love is justified by loving.

What we have lived
Remains indecipherable.
& yet we remain.
& still, we write.
& so, we write.
Watch us move above the fog
Like a promontory at dusk.
Shall this leave us biter?
Or better?

Our scars are the brightest Parts of us.

The hardest part of grief
Is giving it a name.
The pain pulls us apart,
Like lips about to speak.
Without language nothing can live
At all, let alone
Beyond itself.

Lost as we feel, there is no better
Compass than compassion.
We find ourselves not by being
The most seen, but the most seeing.

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

Because being American is more than a pride we inherit — It's the past we step into, and how we repair it.

There are some of us who, when experiencing a tragedy or comedy in our lives, already think: How will this be told to another ? Can it be told? How can we possibly begin the story of what has happened to us?

Strength is separate from survival.
What endures isn't always what escapes
& what is withered can still withstand.

When asking how others were faring, We did not expect an honest or full response. What words can answer how we’re remaining alive?

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.

We are desperate to flatten the curve. Oh, how we miss curving into each other.

Poke the scar until it speaks.
This is how every memory starts.

Our wounds, too, are our windows
Through them we watch the world

Amanda Gorman Quotes

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