Caribbean Literature Quotes

My heart was burning for home. For a moment I felt like crying out, but at the moment of greater pain my mother's voice came back to me. It was as if she was here and talking, Stay and take an education, boy. Take it in, That's the main thing. ~ Michael Anthony

Yuh cyah vex when soca playin ~ Wayne Gerard Trotman

And immediately we rushed like horses, wild with the knowledge of this song, and bolted into a startingly loud harmony:
'Rule Britannia, Britannia rules the waves; Britons, never-never-ne-verr shall be slaves!'
and singing, I saw the kings and the queens in the room with us, laughing in a funny way, and smiling and happy with us. The headmaster was soaked in glee. And I imagined all the glories of Britannia, who, or what or which, had brought us out of the ships crossing over from the terrible seas from Africa, and had placed us on this island, and had given us such good headmasters and assistant masters, and such a nice vicar to teach us how to pray to God - and he had come from England; and such nice white people who lived on the island with us, and who gave us jobs watering their gardens and taking out their garbage, most of which we found delicious enough to eat...all through the ages, all through the years of history; from the Tudors on the wall, down through the Stuarts also on the wall, all through the Elizabethans and including those men and women singing in their hearts with us, hanging dead and distant on our schoolroom walls; Britannia, who, or what or which, had ruled the waves all these hundreds of years, all these thousands and millions of years, and kept us on the island, happy - the island of Barbados (Britannia the Second), free from all invasions. Not even the mighty Germans; not even the Russians whom our headmaster said were dressed in red, had ~ Austin Clarke

I believe a writer is...the scribe-griot of his/her nation. S/he has the power to incite, ignite, excite, pacify, edify, motivate and eliminate others with the slash of a pen, click of a mouse or swipe of a finger. Though coloured by time, class, age, geography, childhood and other factors, a writer crystallises a slice of his/her society's culture, mores and its dark and light truths. A writer makes everything real. ~ Sandra Sealy

To ask how I feel about writing is to ask how I feel about breathing. ~ Shakirah Bourne

For isn't it odd that the only language I have in which to speak of this crime is the language of the criminal who committed the crime? ~ Jamaica Kincaid

Caribbean literature only has to be true to itself. It doesn't need colonialism or imperialism. It's always been vibrant. ~ Marlon James

No one would choose to be jerked randomly off task again and again until you have half a dozen things you're trying to get done, all at the same time. ~ Marilyn Vos Savant

Adjectives are the sugar of literature and adverbs the salt. ~ Henry James

Literary theory has become a parody of science, generating its own arcane jargon. In the process, tragically, it discourages love of literature for its own sake. ~ Nancy Pearcey

Literature is a means to delight the mind and embolden the spirit. ~ Ian Mortimer

Our desire to say more grows bigger and what to say about it, except that saying is not always about saying, growing is not always about growing. ~ Dejan Stojanovic

My mother's father taught English literature. When I was about ten or eleven, I could recite Macaulay's 'Lays of Ancient Rome.' While other kids were playing pedestrian war games, I'd be Horatius keeping the bridge. ~ Bernie Taupin

The ancient priests had said, "Thus far and no farther. We set the limits to thought." The Greeks said, "All things are to be examined and called into question. There are no limits set to thought." It is an extraordinary fact that by the time we have actual, documentary knowledge of the Greeks there is not a trace to be found of that domination over the mind by the priests which played such a decisive part in the ancient world. The priest plays no real part in either the history or the literature of Greece. ~ Edith Hamilton

Temper your enjoyments with prudence, lest there be written on your heart that fearful word 'satiety.' ~ Francis Quarles

If the ox of an Israelite bruise the ox of a Gentile, the Israelite is exempt from paying damages; but should the ox of a Gentile bruise the ox of an Israelite, the Gentile is bound to recompense him in full.' -- Bava Kama, fol. 38, Col. 2"

-- Hebraic Literature, page 31 ~ Maurice H. Harris

Just handling this ocean of different books - new and used, in and out of print, famous and forgotten - it was literature as this giant mosaic of texts and experiments and attitudes. I think it's just very liberating to break out of a great man's theory of history.
I guess I've always liked working from that sense of - what would you call it? - license that the margins permit. I always just visualize myself writing books that were meant one day to be dusty, forgotten volumes being encountered by intrepid browsers in a used bookstore. It was a much less freighted way to think about trying to enter the conversation than to imagine I had to write The Great Gatsby. ~ Jonathan Lethem

In literature classes, you don't learn about genes; in physics classes you don't learn about human evolution. So you get a fragmented view of the world. That makes it hard to find meaning in education. ~ David Christian

Of all human events, perhaps, the publication of a first volume of verses is the most insignificant; but though a matter of no moment to the world, it is still of some concern to the author. ~ Herman Melville

It is the unspecified 'you' of modern love poems that I am mostly concerned with here. At least, the addressee is commonly a lover, and the very fact that the name is withheld is offered as a guarantee of the closeness and significance of the relationship. ~ John Fuller

No one has the right to enter literature without fresh new ideas. We've got too many dexterous drudges as it is. ~ Jan Neruda

Like flies in amber, like corpses frozen in ice, that which according to the laws of nature should pass away is, by the miracle of ink on paper, preserved. It is a kind of magic. As one tends the graves of the dead, so I tend the books. And every day I open a volume or two, read a few lines or pages, allow the voices of the forgotten dead to resonate inside my head. ~ Diane Setterfield

And Marx spoke of the fact that socialism will be the kingdom of freedom, where man realizes himself in a way that humankind has never seen before. This was an inspiring body of literature to read. ~ Albert Maltz

A classical work doesn't ever have to be understood entirely. But those who are educated and who are still educating themselves must desire to learn more and more from it. ~ Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Poetry, it is often said and loudly so, is life's true mirror. But a monkey looking into a work of literature looks in vain for Socrates. ~ Franz Grillparzer

In Jefferson's mind democracy was tantamount to extreme individualism. ~ Herbert Croly

I don't hate language. I have my own language, but I also enjoy the English language. Obviously, you don't read a lot of literature and not care about language. ~ Twyla Tharp

Literature was not promulgated by a pale and emasculated critical priesthood singing their litanies in empty churches - nor is it a game for the cloistered elect, the tinhorn mendicants of low calorie despair.
Literature is as old as speech. It grew out of human need for it, and it has not changed except to become more needed.
The skalds, the bards, the writers are not separate and exclusive. From the beginning, their functions, their duties, their responsibilities have been decreed by our species.
speech at the Nobel Banquet at the City Hall in Stockholm, December 10, 1962 ~ John Steinbeck

Any novel of importance has a purpose. If only the "purpose" be large enough, and not at outs with the passional inspiration. ~ D.H. Lawrence

I think the influence of books is neither direct and more predictable. Books themselves are too unruly, and so are readers. ~ Maureen Corrigan

I don't care very much for literary shrines and hauntsI knew a woman in London who boasted that she had lodgings from the windows of which she could throw a stone into Carlyle's yard. And when I said, "Why throw a stone into Carlyle's yard?" she looked at me as if I were an imbecile and changed the subject. ~ Carolyn Wells

Because I don't have to be careful of people's feelings when I teach literature, and I do when I'm teaching writing. ~ Tobias Wolff

Not everything in life is so black and white, but the authenticity of the Book of Mormon and its keystone role in our religion seem to be exactly that. Either Joseph Smith was the prophet he said he was, a prophet who, after seeing the Father and the Son, later beheld the angel Moroni, repeatedly heard counsel from Moroni's lips, and eventually received at his hands a set of ancient gold plates that he then translated by the gift and power of God, or else he did not. And if he did not, he would not be entitled to the reputation of New England folk hero or well-meaning young man or writer of remarkable fiction. No, nor would he be entitled to be considered a great teacher, a quintessential American religious leader, or the creator of great devotional literature. If he had lied about the coming forth of the Book of Mormon, he would certainly be none of these...

If Joseph Smith did not translate the Book of Mormon as a work of ancient origin, then I would move heaven and earth to meet the "real" nineteenth-century author. After one hundred and fifty years, no one can come up with a credible alternative candidate, but if the book were false, surely there must be someone willing to step forward-if no one else, at least the descendants of the "real" author-claiming credit for such a remarkable document and all that has transpired in its wake. After all, a writer that can move millions can make millions. Shouldn't someone have come forth then or now to cashier the whole p ~ Jeffrey R. Holland

Once the government can demand of a publisher the names of the purchasers of his publications, the free press as we know it disappears. Then the spectre of a government agent will look over the shoulder of everyone who reads. The purchase of a book or pamphlet today may result in a subpoena tomorrow. Fear of criticism goes with every person into the bookstall. The subtle, imponderable pressures of the orthodox lay hold. Some will fear to read what is unpopular, what the powers-that-be dislike. When the light of publicity may reach any student, any teacher, inquiry will be discouraged. The books and pamphlets that are critical of the administration, that preach an unpopular policy in domestic or foreign affairs, that are in disrepute in the orthodox school of thought will be suspect and subject to investigation. The press and its readers will pay a heavy price in harassment. But that will be minor in comparison with the menace of the shadow which government will cast over literature that does not follow the dominant party line. If the lady from Toledo can be required to disclose what she read yesterday and what she will read tomorrow, fear will take the place of freedom in the libraries, book stores, and homes of the land. Through the harassment of hearings, investigations, reports, and subpoenas government will hold a club over speech and over the press."

[United States v. Rumely, 345 U.S. 41 (1953)] ~ William O. Douglas

We have taken the manatees out of the areas in the Caribbean and really elsewhere in the world, and this disruption to the system makes such systems vulnerable to changes as they come by, whether it's in terms of disease or terms or global warming for that matter. ~ Sylvia Earle

There is
a heaviness in me
worth my weight in gold,
passed over for copper. ~ Olivia Barnes

Scarlett O'Hara wasn't pretty. ~ Margaret Mitchell

Oh! it is absurd to have a hard-and-fast rule about what one should read and what one shouldn't. More than half of modern culture depends on what one shouldn't read. ~ Oscar Wilde

The secrets of success are a good wife and a steady job. My wife told me. ~ Howard Nemerov

Science fiction is a unique literature. Science fiction is the first literature that says, 'Tomorrow is going to be different than yesterday, it's going to be a lot different.' ~ David Gerrold

Novels are excluded from "serious reading," so that the man who, bent on self-improvement, has been deciding to devote ninety minutes three times a week to a complete study of the works of Charles Dickens will be well advised to alter his plans. The reason is not that novels are not serious-some of the great literature of the world is in the form of prose fiction-the reason is that bad novels out not to be read, and that good novels never demand any appreciable mental application on the part of the reader. A good novel rushes you forward like a skiff down a stream, and you arrive at the end, perhaps breathless, but unexhausted. The best novels involve the least strain. Now in the cultivation of the mind one of the most important factors is precisely the feeling of strain, of difficulty, of a task which one part of you is anxious to achieve and another part of you is anxious to shirk; and that feeling cannot be got in facing a novel. ~ Arnold Bennett