The more I read my poems, the more I find out about them. I still read them with the same passion I felt when I wrote them as a young man.

Writing was a political act and poetry was a cultural weapon.

Back in those early days when I began my apprenticeship as a poet, I also tried to voice our anger, spirit of defiance and resistance in a Jamaican poetic idiom.

Once you have a disease like cancer, you look at life a bit differently. Some things that were important no longer seem as important as they were.

I have never, ever sought validation from the arbiters of British poetic taste.

At the end of the day, life's about realising one's human potential. I don't know if I've realised mine, but I've certainly gone a long way towards realising some goals and some dreams.

I don't go to see bands any more because I've got tinnitus, so I have to avoid loud music. You get used to it, but when it's quiet you hear a constant ringing.

Locks or no locks, you're not going to cage me in.

Paris is beautiful, but nothing beats home.

Aesthetics is both politics and philosophy, a series of agreements and disagreements between subjective minds.

I do believe that there is something at the core of protecting your offspring - the love of a mother, you just don't get in the way of it.

Adoption has been a part of my life and a part of my family, so it was how I wanted to start. It felt natural and right to me.

Very early on I was interested in doing political art, but it was not feminist political art.

Private property is one of the best institutions which has ever evolved, to protect us from the bullying of others.

It's taken me a long time to learn to accept the risks and just be willing to try it over and over again.

What I realized was how difficult an hour show is and how miserable you can be if you're not happy doing it.

The beauty and wonders of nature are as alluring as the pursuit of Art, and made of me a landscape painter.