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" The myth of Naipaul... has long been a farce. "

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" I am primarily, absolutely a Caribbean writer. "

" I knew very early what I wanted to do, and I considered myself lucky to know that's what I wanted, even in a place like Saint Lucia where there was no publishing house and no theatre. "

" Our artists and writers should not be forced like soldiers to die on foreign soil or to return wounded and crawl famously into a hole. "

" 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. "

" I have no curiosity. I'm an island boy. "

" When you're young, influences count. "

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

" Break a vase, and the love that reassembles the fragments is stronger than that love which took its symmetry for granted when it was whole. "

" There is a force of exultation, a celebration of luck, when a writer finds himself a witness to the early morning of a culture that is defining itself, branch by branch, leaf by leaf, in that self-defining dawn, which is why, especially at the edge of the sea, it is good to make a ritual of the sunrise. "

" If music goes out of language, then you are in bad trouble. "

" Like any art, what is the most imprisoning thing is also the most delivering thing. If an actor knows he only has 12 syllables in a line, the challenge is, 'How can I interpret the meaning and contain it without going one syllable over?' "

" Miscegenation is not an idea that we would have in the Caribbean. It wouldn't come up because anybody could marry anybody, you know. I'm not saying that there aren't prejudices in the Caribbean, but the idea of the word 'miscegenation' is not something that we think of. "

" You can't read to yourself. It's your inner ear that hears a poem. If you hear a poet read his own work, it becomes very exciting. The melody is a great part of it. "

" There is a restless identity in the New World. The New World needs an identity without guilt or blame. "

" My family background really only consists of my mother. She was a widow. My father died quite young; he must have been thirty-one. Then there was my twin brother and my sister. We had two aunts as well, my father's sisters. But the immediate family consisted of my mother, my brother, my sister, and me. "

" 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.' "

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

" My dedication to trying to be a poet started very, very young, and I was very well encouraged by good teachers and by older friends and so on, so I think it is a benediction, and I also think it is a calling, a duty. "

" I can be upset by malice. Most critics are very poor poets. Poetry is a craft that takes a lot to appreciate, and there are some critics who have no ear for it. An irresponsible critic can do a lot of psychic damage, but eventually, they don't affect your work. "

" My body's urge is to be in a pair of shorts, working and going down to the beach. "

" There are some things people avoid saying in interviews because they sound pompous or sentimental or too mystical. "

" My mother taught Shakespeare and used to act. "

" The painter I really thought I could learn from was Cezanne - some sort of resemblance to oranges and greens and browns of the dry season in St. Lucia. "

" There is no one more deserving of a place in Poets' Corner. Ted Hughes introduced a new kind of landscape into English poetry. The most compelling aspect of his work was his intimacy with nature. "

" A long time ago, I thought, as a writer in the Caribbean, 'I don't ever want to have to write 'It was great in Paris.'' Because I don't think, proportionately speaking, that one's experience in a city as opposed to, say, a village in St. Lucia, is superior to the other. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" There's a ritualistic element to tragedy that everyone shares; there's something curiously glorious in terms of the most horrible kind of events that happen. "

" There's always a need at a critical time for poetry. "

" The Chinese, the African, and the European - they are all there. So the division of the Caribbean experience into being emphatically only African is absurd. "