I have never, ever sought validation from the arbiters of British poetic taste.

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.

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.

So Rise now to the Occasion that is Life

Imagine how much happier we would be, how much freer to be our true individual selves, if we didn't have the weight of gender expectations.

People call you extremist when you are spreading Islam but always remember that you are not..they are extremist because they are endangering there own life with there own hands.

You are what you read because your mind is the sit of your knowledge acquried

Thus, the Archivist must display at all times scrupulous independence and a devotion to the laws and principles which govern the responsibilities of the office.

The best government is that which teaches us to govern ourselves.

Mistakes are a drag, because you get in the area of regret and self-pity.

The historian must have some conception of how men who are not historians behave.

Simon had been all lined up and he’d managed to throw away the best girl he’d ever meet. “What a dumbass,” Beck muttered. “No way I’d have done that.

As far as the charge against me is concerned I have a clear conscience.