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.

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.

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.

Every man must choose what they want to do with their time to avoid regret in the future.

What is it that brings on these moods of yours? Nothing mysterious: the ordinary pain of being alive.

The United States ranks 14th in the world in education. Even if we subtract Sarah Palin's test scores, it only bumps us to third. Damn you, Finland!

Whereas she wished more of the population were better educated, she also believed that education was largely wasted on the majority of the people she met.

My mom gets these new iPhones and stuff and she's like "Leo, can you figure it out?" because she had no idea. So yeah, I'm pretty good with gadgets.

I don't look for signs. But when things happen, I say, 'OK, something must be right.' Or 'OK, something must be wrong.'

So my dad raised me, and he's a huge football fan.

Our hope of immortality does not come from any religions, but nearly all religions come from that hope.

Jesus did not ask us to believe that he was the messiah. He certainly never suggested that he was the second person of the trinity. In fact, he rarely referred to himself at all.

In trying to scramble out of a hole, it sometimes digs it deeper.