I was at a stage in my life where I felt sort of comfortable being a dislocated person emotionally, feeling in some ways like a man without any parti…

- Richard Blanco

I had been thinking about the question, "What do I love about America?" I kept coming back to this idea of community and home, which already obsessed…

- Richard Blanco

As an immigrant, there's a little part of you that always says, "Well, I'm not a hundred percent American." America is some other little boy or some …

- Richard Blanco

Entering into writing a poem is an emotional endeavor for me as well as a spiritual and creative one. Having to write those poems for the inauguratio…

- Richard Blanco

What was transformative was being at the inauguration, reading my poem, and realizing that the quest for home and identity had always been part of my…

- Richard Blanco

We have always been searching for home. It's in our art... our religion... everything.

- Richard Blanco

Artists are the emotional historians of the world.

- Richard Blanco

I like the labels because I think they tell my story in a very concise way: gay, Latino. I think the responsibility that comes with accepting labels …

- Richard Blanco

Everything is symbolic. If they'd picked some middle-aged white guy, well, that would have been a symbol, but it wouldn't have been shocking because …

- Richard Blanco