Jamaican Quotes

“In late 1949, at two and a half years old, I arrived in Jamaica for the first time. I had crossed the Atlantic by air from England. My Jamaican father was studying in London, my European mother was sick, and so in true Jamaican style I was sent home to my grandparents.”

“Part of the desire to see each other succeed is to stop putting a price on success.”

“As the days went by, my frustration festered like an outhouse during a Jamaican summer.”

“Don't let a corrupt Media and Criminal Government continue to Brainwash You. THINK FOR YOURSELVES JAMAICANS WHILE YOU STILL CAN!”

“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.”

“There's a glorious sense of freedom in comedy, just allowing myself to tell jokes, allowing myself to interrupt myself and tell old African folk stories that I made up - or didn't - and Jamaican stories.”

“Listening to their argument made me aware of how empty my life was, and I hated the life I was living all the more. It was quite obvious to me this lady was deeply in love, for she was fighting for what she thought to be hers. Even though I was dating two females at the time, and stringing a third one along, yet I’ve yet to discover that kind of love. I guess this was why my favorite song was ‘I wane be love’, by the Jamaican reggae super star Buru Banton.”

“Know your load. That’s rule numero uno in this business, which is why I make them count the penguins out in front of me one at a time. I’m not going to be the schmuck who shows up in Orlando twobirds short of a dinner party....I know I’m pulling out of Houston with exactly forty-two Gentoo penguins, seventeen Jamaican land iguanas, four tuataras from New Zealand, and a pair of rare, civet-like mammals called linsangs. No more, no less.”

“I was a reader before I was a writer, and when I started putting together my first collection of short stories, Fairytales For Lost Children, I drew on my rich history as a reader to try and create my voice. I wanted this voice to reflect my Somali background, my Kenyan upbringing and my London home. This voice would be a mashup of all the elements that formed my youth; the sticky-sweet Jamaican patois, the Kenyan street slang, my Somali and Italian linguistic tics, my love of jazz poetics and nineties hip-hop slanguistics. This language would form the bed on which my narratives of love, loss, identity and hope would rest.”

“I tend to have really interested conversations with employers. They enjoy my interviews and they always last a little longer than norm for i have so much to say and as one said, i am but a breath of fresh air. I was asked what motivates me?I told them my children.When i was a child, i wanted to be like Oprah. I want to be the kind of person my children will be aspire to be. I want my daughter to say she wants to be like me.”