The country that I was coming from, the island I was in, hadn't been written about, really. So I thought that I virtually had it all to myself, including the language that was spoken there, which was a French Creole, and a landscape that is not recorded, really, and the people.

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

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

What is taught in schools generally in the West Indies is that if something is your thing, it's better than anybody else's because it's yours. It's extremely provincial and also damaging. You prevent people from learning things. The biggest absurdity would be, 'Don't read Shakespeare because he was white.'

There's stuff going on in the world right now, which you can't imagine why is this happening; it's crazy. I don't know what the answer is, but if you didn't have faith in the universe that somehow something great would arrive at the end, then we'd all give up, and that would be a waste of everyone's time.

You can imagine what a dorm room environment is to a CF parent. It's like, oh my God. It's crazy.

If men would as fervently seek after love and righteousness as they do after opinions, there would be no strife on earth, and we should be as children of one father, and should need no law or ordinance. For God is not served by any law, but only by obedience.

Do I wake up every day and thank God that I live in 21st-century Britain? Of course not. But from time to time, I recognise it as an unfathomable privilege.