Since the beginning of establishment, poets and spoken word artists have always been both vocal supporters and critics of government. And in this age of Trump as President, alternative facts, falsehoods becoming truth at the send of a tweet, it's vital that spoken word poetry does its job helping to keep folks 'woke' and not numb or shut down.

Malcolm-Jamal Warner

If you could literally 'rid' yourself of your problems by voicing them, I'd be all for it. But since that isn't so, why not reserve the spoken word for functional interactions and witticisms, if not declarations of love?

Amity Gaige

I call what I do 'modal structures.' Sometimes they're songs, sometimes they're longer, sometimes they're this mantra - I've never called myself a spoken word poet.

Anne Waldman

Orphans, dead parents, lonely children at Christmas, morose spoken word recordings, everything you love about the holidays. Move the turkey over so you can fit your head in the oven.

April Winchell

I don't really have a lot of hobbies. I listen to a lot of spoken word. I get books on tape.

Benny Green

I'm not going to do an album. There's enough horrible drag queens singing - especially when they do that spoken word over music, 'I'm fierce! I'm fierce!'

Bianca Del Rio

There was something about stand-up that music wouldn't give me, which was my love of the spoken word and the mercurial tendency of language to respond to what happens to you.

Bill Bailey

What I love is the comedy of the body. It's a little highfalutin', but you can even say pre-verbal comedy. People laugh differently at stuff that isn't brought to them via the spoken word. It's from a different place; it's a different quality of laughter.

Bill Irwin

The pictures are created by the listener, with a little help from the broadcaster. The pictures are perfect. If you're showing pictures, different things in that picture can distract from the spoken word.

Bob Edwards

Is it spoken word? Kinda, but that's a weird area. Is it comedy? Well, it's funny but no, it's not comedy.

Bruce McCulloch

I think for me, or for anyone who plays the quarterback position, it's almost an unspoken word when you think about leadership. Some guys can be a leader and be a running back or a lineman, or wide receiver, strong safety, or linebacker. But when you speak of quarterbacks, it's automatically a default that you're supposed to be a leader.

Cam Newton

Beta males and females historically fare poorly in anchor positions, and whoever has the dominate, or more alpha, personality will always win out in spoken word count simply because they don't wait for an opening.

Dana Loesch

I kind of got popular as a spoken word artist, and I ended up doing some ads and audio stuff for Nike and Sprite.

Dante Basco

A musical, in its true form, is where emotions reach a height where true spoken word cannot be enough, and you must sing. That's all it is. It's not posh; it's not out of your reach. It's the most visceral way to tell a story.

Donna Lynne Champlin

When people are speaking, they require our undivided attention. We focus on them; we listen very carefully. We listen to the spoken words and the unspoken messages. This means looking directly at the person, eyes connected; we forget we have a watch, just focusing for that moment on that person.

Frances Hesselbein

As a young woman, I experienced high school and heartbreak, and the music I started to write was a little bit more poetic, and more inspired by spoken word. The real raw emotional things that sit in the back of our minds, that you were afraid to say? That's how I started to write my music. And that's how 'H.E.R. Volume One' came about.

Gabriella Wilson

Everything starts with writing. I heard Nikki Giovanni and was blown away. I just thought 'wow'; she was writing from a black girl's perspective, and the imagery was so vivid that I started doing spoken word.

Jill Scott

Every spoken word arouses our self-will.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I wanted to do 'Manzanar' because I'd never done anything like it before. The spoken word there is between a drama and an essay, and I'd never worked in concert with an orchestra.

John Cho

Rap and spoken word have reawakened the country to poetry in itself. Texting and Twitter encourage creative uses of casual language, in ways I have celebrated widely. But we've fallen behind on savoring the formal layer of our language.

John McWhorter

In my shows, I always try to incorporate music because it's the most natural way to set a tone. So if I want to do a show about depression, I use the opera. If I want to do a show about greed, I use spoken word. If I want to do a show about the injustice that's taking place in the world, I might play Sam Cooke.

Kerby Jean-Raymond