“The personal vocabulary, the individual melody whose metre is one's bi...” — Derek Walcott Quote

“The personal vocabulary, the individual melody whose metre is one's biography, joins in that sound, with any luck, and the body moves like a walking, a waking island.”

“Memory that yearns to join the centre, a limb remembering the body from which it has been severed, like those bamboo thighs of the god.”

“Rhyme is an attempt to reassemble and reaffirm the possibility of paradise. There is a wholeness, a serenity, in sounds coupling to form a memory.”

“I view my records as a personal biography.”

“Grade school ruined reading for me by demanding book reports for such snore-a-thons as Benjamin Franklin's biography written for children.”

“I realize that I had always in my heart of hearts planned to write a biography of Marie Antoinette.”