There are days when I intentionally don't write. For instance, I never write when I'm traveling, because travel is a situation where I can learn more by looking and listening than by working.

Reading a novel in which all characters illustrate patience, hard work, chastity, and delayed gratification could be a pretty dull experience.

I do try not to spend much time reading in the suspense genre.

I don't have dry seasons, because I don't allow them.

I had been writing fiction since I was in eighth grade, because I loved it.

If I don't have a project going, I sit down and begin to write something - a character sketch, a monologue, a description of some sight, or even just a list of ideas.

Yes, in my books I do edit myself to keep from becoming the Village Explainer.

Much of what we do in life has a huge component of luck.

I do want to write about Jane Whitefield again, but only when I have a good enough idea - something I've figured out about her that's news and that's worth a reader's time.

It's important, I think, for a writer of fiction to maintain an awareness of the pace and shape of the book as he's writing it. That is, he should be making an object, not chattering.

Contrary to what many writers imply about the process, nobody forces a writer to sell his work to the film industry.

Always give the rabble something to love and something to hate.

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.

The formation of different languages and of distinct species and the proofs that both have been developed through a gradual process, are curiously parallel.

Democracy cannot be forced upon a society, neither is it a gift that can be held forever. It has to be struggled hard for and defended everyday anew.

If you're gonna wait for the universe to start making sense, you have a long wait ahead of you.

I hope that when people with Down's see me, they will be inspired to do more than they think they can.

Confidence has a lot to do with interviewing - that, and timing.

We don't know what may yet happen to us, what military and political defeats we may yet have to face.

Sometimes I wonder why the corporate world is seen as a god choice for those of us that will never rise above clerical work and general administration.

It seems like a totally gratuitous myth to tell people a giant rabbit comes round at night leaving candy in a haphazard way around the house... and the cover shows the bunny caught in the act.