The truest writers are those who see language not as a linguistic process but as a living element.

For every poet it is always morning in the world; history a forgotten, insomniac night. The fate of poetry is to fall in love with the world in spite of history.

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.

Summer for prose and lemons, for nakedness and languor.

Good science and good art are always about a condition of awe. I don't think there is any other function for the poet or the scientist in the human tribe but the astonishment of the soul.

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

The sigh of History rises over ruins, not over landscapes, and in the Antilles there are few ruins to sigh over, apart from the ruins of sugar estates and abandoned forts.

The future happens. No matter how much we scream.

Memory that yearns to join the centre, a limb remembering the body from which it has been severed, like those bamboo thighs of the god.

The time will come when, with elation, you will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror, and each will smile at the other’s welcome.

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

She read books quickly and compulsively, paperback after paperback, as if she might drift away without the anchor of the printed page.

History is a treadmill turned by rising human numbers. Today GM crops are being marketed as the only means of avoiding mass starvation. They are unlikely to improve the lives of peasant farmers

All words are written in the same ink, 'flower' and 'power, ' say, are much the same, and though I might write 'blood, blood, blood'all over the page, the paper would not be stainednow would I bleed.

Steadiness of faith, was, in the long run, as illuminating and essential as sophistication of thought.

I like a teacher who gives you something to take home to think about besides homework.

There is always someone worse off than yourself.

Everything you're sure is right can be wrong in another place.

I dive all over the world: Fiji, Australia, the Caribbean, Hawaii, and many other places.

As God is my witness, the more I deal with women, the more I like my cat.

When backed up against a wall, dig deep, demand excellence, stand tall, and be strong.