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" I feel blessed that I was gifted. "

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" The history of the world - by which, of course, we mean Europe - is a record of intertribal lacerations, of ethnic cleansings. "

" I have to live, socially, in an almost unfinished society. Among the almost great, among the almost true, among the almost honest. That allows me to describe the anguish. "

" The English language is nobody's special property. It is the property of the imagination: it is the property of the language itself. "

" If you talk about language in the Caribbean, you must relate it to history. "

" Sometimes what we call tragedy, at least in the theater, are really case histories. They're based on the central figure, and things happen to that person, and they're called tragedy because they're extremely sad. But tragedy always has a glorious thing happen at the end of it. That's what the catharsis is. "

" I was writing from a very, very early age. My father used to write. He died early, and my mother was a schoolteacher, so my academic background from childhood is a strong one, a good one. "

" What makes a poem is the discipline inherent in making a poem: trying to fit feelings in the requisite number of syllables and lines, disciplining one's feelings. "

" The poet complains or points out the discontent that lies at the heart of man, the individual man, and how can that be redeemed? "

" I don't believe that poetry is in danger because nobody wants to read it or appreciate it. There is a tremendous audience for it on any given day or night. You just have to know where to look. "

" I write plays and poetry at the same time, and I'm always refining, but I'm not obsessive about it. It's what I like to do, what I've always wanted to do. "

" What I described in 'Another Life' - about being on the hill and feeling the sort of dissolution that happened - is a frequent experience in a younger writer. "

" I have never separated the writing of poetry from prayer. I have grown up believing it is a vocation, a religious vocation. "

" I don't want to write poems about the royal wedding. I would have to be moved by the event. "

" As much as I like teaching and students, it's a kind of rigor, a discipline, that's against my body. "

" I don't feel like a celebrity. Poetry justifies celebrity. It's good to have respect for a poet. "

" What is taught in schools generally in the West Indies is that if something is your thing, it's better than anybody else's because it's yours. It's extremely provincial and also damaging. You prevent people from learning things. The biggest absurdity would be, 'Don't read Shakespeare because he was white.' "

" Modesty is not possible in performance in the Caribbean - and that's wonderful. "

" Because that is what such a city is, in the New World, a writer's heaven. "

" I hate all that nonsense about not touching the colonialists' language. All that about it being corrupting and belonging to the master and making you Caliban. That thinking just denies you an outlet. You deny everything that is great from a language, whether it is Conrad or Shakespeare. "

" Minor writers think style is all. "

" When a child's mind develops and is heading in a certain direction, we murder that mentality, we murder that imagination, by saying, 'Now, that is all well and good, but now sit down and start to study.' "

" Any serious attempt to try to do something worthwhile is ritualistic. "

" I always knew that was what I wanted to do - to write, particularly poetry. "

" The greatest writers have been, at heart, parochial, provincial in their rootedness. "

" The country that I was coming from, the island I was in, hadn't been written about, really. So I thought that I virtually had it all to myself, including the language that was spoken there, which was a French Creole, and a landscape that is not recorded, really, and the people. "

" I didn't pass the scholarship exam for Oxford because of poor mathematics. "

" Look at Allen Ginsberg. In poems like 'Kaddish' and 'Howl,' you can hear a cantor between the lines. It's fully alive, and I think that's what's missing in modern poetry. It's too dry and cerebral. "

" If you know what you are going to write when you're writing a poem, it's going to be average. "

" The headmaster asked to read one of my poems at some celebration or other when I was about 10. When I look back, that is phenomenal encouragement. "

" After a while, when the writer is mature, it doesn't really matter - not because of finances but because of reputation. It doesn't really matter how many awards you get. "