Caribbean Is Quotes & Sayings

Latin American Art is an operational term used to describe art actually made in the more than twenty countries that make up Latin America and that encompass Mexico, Central and South America, and the Caribbean. — Mari Carmen Ramirez

The Cayman Islands, a British Crown colony in the Caribbean, for instance, is the fifth largest banking center in the world, — Michel Chossudovsky

I sometimes detect that a type of regional divide is setting in, and there is a lack of real Caribbean connection among the islands, and I am concerned about this. — Anthony Carmona

There's one white powder which is by far the most lethal known, it's called sugar ... The Caribbean back in the 18th century was a soft drug producer: sugar, rum, tobacco, chocolate. And in order to do it, they had to enslave Africans. — Noam Chomsky

Sunsets steal our breath. Caribbean blue stills our hearts. Newborn babies stir our tears. But take all these away - strip away the sunsets, oceans, and cooing babies - and leave us in the Sahara, and we still have reason to dance in the sand. Why? Because God is with us. — Max Lucado

I think the Caribbean countries face rising oceans and they face increase in the severity of hurricanes. This is something that is very, very scary to all of us. The island states in the world represent - I remember this number - one-half of 1 percent of the carbon emissions in the world. And they will - some of them will disappear. — Steven Chu

We found letters at the house we bought from a sailor to his wife who lived in the house. He went down to the Caribbean on this trader vessel, bringing down salted fish. There would be handwritten letters, but also telegrams, saying which ports he was in. And he'd be gone for three months. That was just the way it is. — Michael Winter

What happened to Haiti is a threat that could happen anywhere in the Caribbean to these island nations, you know, because of global warming, because of climate change and all this. — Danny Glover

I like the color of the Caribbean." I paused and absorbed the warmth of her smile before adding, "Dogs, not cats. Boxers, not briefs. Redheads over brunettes ... " I glanced sideways at her, and she met my gaze. "I have a penchant for girls in velvet jackets ... and I think you're the most beautiful girl I've ever seen."
She choked in surprise, sputtered, and shook her head.
"You see? This is what I mean."
"What?"
"Nobody talks like that. I barely know you."
I was genuinely confused. Didn't girls like to hear this stuff? Besides, it was, conveniently enough, the truth. "Well, I talk like this. And you should be used to people telling you you're beautiful."
"Well, I'm not," she said, and she sounded like she was getting irritated with me again. The feeling was mutual.
I leaned against the wall and pulled up one knee. "Okay. I take it back. You are completely average. Dull, dull, dull. Unremarkable in every way. — Anne Greenwood Brown

Will Turner: This is either madness... or brilliance.

Jack Sparrow: It's remarkable how often those two traits coincide. — Jack Sparrow

Lily Owens: If your favorite color is blue, why did you paint the house pink?
August Boatwright: [chuckles] That was May's doing. When we went to the paint shop, she latched on to a color called, "Caribbean Pink." She said it made her feel like dancing a Spanish Flamenco. I personally thought it was the tackiest color I had ever seen, but I figured if it could lift May's heart, it was good enough to live in.
Lily Owens: That was awfully nice of you.
August Boatwright: Well, I don't know. Some things in life, like the color of a house, don't really matter. But lifting someone's heart? Now, that matters. — Sue Monk Kidd

John Dorschner, one of our staff writers here at Tropic magazine at The Miami Herald, who is a good friend of mine and an excellent journalist, but a raving liberal, wrote a story about a group that periodically pops up saying that they're going to start their own country or start their own planet or go back to their original planet, or whatever. They were going to "create a libertarian society" on a floating platform in the Caribbean somewhere. I know there's never going to be a country on a floating anything, but if they want to talk about it, that's great. — Dave Barry

My grandmothers are Irish-American and German-American; my grandfather is from the Caribbean. My father is African-American. My family looked funny. I just started naturally imitating whoever I was talking to. I didn't want to be a phony, but I felt very authentic in the moment. — Sarah Jones

The ultimate 20-year plan is to be living in the Caribbean, writing, living off the land, eating from the ocean and probably smoking herb. — Ryan Phillippe

Most films I've worked on have had large casts, but they've been wonderful people. I think the monkey in Pirates of the Caribbean is the most temperamental costar I've had. It would throw tantrums like you wouldn't believe. — Geoffrey Rush

Lately we have been getting facts pointing to the "oceanic" nature of the floor of so-called inland seas. Through geological investigations it has been definitely established that in its deepest places, for instance, the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico, the Earth's crust is devoid of granite stratum. The same may be said quite confidently about the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. Could the interpretation of these data be that inland seas were the primary stage of the formation of oceanic basins? — Vladimir Belousov

Afro-Caribbean influences are in me as a creative being the same way Spanish influences were in Picasso's work. I think the notion of labels - "black dancer, black choreographer" -is a ploy to divide and conquer, and to limit. — Garth Fagan

If we allow ourselves to cast aside the unspeakable; refusing to believe in our own capacity for hate, deceit, and destruction, then is there hope for our properity? — William Macmichael

I didn't know this about myself, but when 'Pirates of the Caribbean' came out I realised that I didn't enjoy a huge amount of recognition. I didn't react to it well, but I think life is about finding out who you are and what you like. So I started doing independent movies and art-house films instead. — Keira Knightley

One of the effects of indoctrination, of passing into the anglo-centrism of British West Indian culture, is that you believe absolutely in the hegemony of the King's English and in the proper forms of expression. Or else your writing is not literature; it is folklore, or worse. And folklore can never be art. Read some poetry by West Indian writers
some, not all
and you will see what I mean. The reader has to dissect anglican stanza after anglican stanza for Caribbean truth, and may never find it. The anglican ideal
Milton, Wordsworth, Keats
was held before us with an assurance that we were unable, and would never be able, to achieve such excellence. We crouched outside the cave. — Michelle Cliff

Fraud is common when you give away billions. Fraud related to Hurricane Katrina spending is estimated to top $2 billion. In addition, debit cards provided to hurricane victims were used to pay for Caribbean vacations, NFL tickets, Dom Perignon champagne, 'Girls Gone Wild' videos, and at least one sex change operation. — Mark Skousen

I would much rather end up a fertiliser under a sunflower which is eventually made into sunflower seed oil so that instead of nibbling me in her prawn cocktail, the pretty girl will rub me on her bristols as she suns herself on a beach in the Caribbean. — Oliver Reed

I go to the Caribbean for a month every January with hand baggage only. All you need is a passport and a credit card. — John Niven

Being an actor is a good way to earn a living. And to meet fabulous people. It's great to live very comfortably. I've been lucky, I've had a lot of fun with great roles, but it is true that if I were extremely rich, I would stop and I would go to play football on a beach in the Caribbean with my children. — Gary Oldman

The West Indian is not exactly hostile to change, but he is not much inclined to believe in it. This comes from a piece of wisdom that his climate of eternal summer teaches him. It is that, under all the parade of human effort and noise, today is like yesterday, and tomorrow will be like today; that existence is a wheel of recurring patterns from which no one escapes; that all anybody does in this life is live for a while and then die for good, without finding out much; and that therefore the idea is to take things easy and enjoy the passing time under the sun. The white people charging hopefully around the islands these days in the noon glare, making deals, bulldozing airstrips, hammering up hotels, laying out marinas, opening new banks, night clubs, and gift shops, are to him merely a passing plague. They have come before and gone before. — Herman Wouk

The night-soil men can see a bird walking in trees. It isn't a bird. It is a woman who has removed her skin and is on her way to drink the blood of her secret enemies. It is a woman who has left her skin i a corner of a house made out of wood. It is a woman who is reasonable and admires honeybees in the hibiscus. — Jamaica Kincaid

In the world outside this glass room, songbirds are feeding and resting in the trees. Some will take off tonight and not land until they reach Venezuela. Sandpipers, plovers, and broad-winged hawks have already left for Patagonia and Panama. Bats are headed for caves in Kentucky and Tennessee. Out in the Atlantic, humpback whales pass by on their way to the Caribbean. Even now, Canada geese are honking toward us from Quebec. It is a good day for the beginnings of journeys.Every time I look at you, I think, Now I cannot die. — Sandra Steingraber

The American sense of the importance, the fundamental importance of the black-white dichotomy, comes out of societies founded in the era of the African slave trade, so societies like ours, that is to say the western hemisphere, the Caribbean and so forth, we share a lot in common. — Nell Irvin Painter

The level of the Pacific was not twenty feet higher than that of the Atlantic, as had been the accepted view for centuries. Sea level was sea level, the same on both sides. The difference was in the size of their tides. (The tides on the Pacific are tremendous, eighteen to twenty feet, while on the Caribbean there is little or no tide, barely more than a foot. When Balboa stood at last on the Pacific shore, he had seen no rush of lordly breakers, but an ugly brown mud flat reaching away for a mile and more, because he had arrived when the tide was out.) — David McCullough

The Caribbean is such an apocalyptic place, whether it's the decimation of the indigenous populations by the Europeans, whether it's the importation of slaves and their subsequent being worked to death by the millions in many ways, whether it's the immigrant processes which began for many people, new worlds ending their old ones. — Junot Diaz

I ain't know what it is to be a girl Mistress Grandsol. I pass straight from child to woman without even a pause for girl between. Girl is a privilege I never know. — Robert Antoni

Jack Sparrow: [after Will draws his sword] Put it away, son. It's not worth you getting beat again.

Will Turner: You didn't beat me. You ignored the rules of engagement. In a fair fight, I'd kill you.

Jack Sparrow: That's not much incentive for me to fight fair, then, is it? — Jack Sparrow

I think being born in America and growing up exclusively within the American boundaries of race and race oppression is a very different experience for those of us who grew up under the boundaries of race and race experience in the Caribbean, or for those who grew up in Africa. Our experience has not made us monolithic. We're not all of the same stripe, coming from the same place with the same sense of what the tactics have to be to survive. — Harry Belafonte

Watching Madonna puffing on a cigar on David Letterman's show, I thought, 'Gosh, she's feeling so India! All she needs is long, black hair and a trip to the Caribbean to burn her skin up.' — La India

There is something fresh and crisp about the first hours of a Caribbean day, a happy anticipation that something is about to happen, maybe just up the street or around the next corner. — Hunter S. Thompson

We live in a world of unimaginable surprises - from the fusion energy that lights the sun to the genetic and evolutionary consequences of this light's dancing for eons upon the earth - and yet paradise conforms to our most superficial concerns with all the fidelity of a Caribbean cruise. This is wondrously strange. If one didn't know better, one would think that man, in his fear of losing all that he loves, had created heaven, along with its gatekeeper God, in his own image. — Sam Harris

I've always judged places and times by how lonely they felt. The entire Midwest, for example, strikes me as horrifically lonely, Indiana more so than Wisconsin and Wisconsin more so than Ohio or Illinois. Coasts are dependably less lonely than inland areas while the warmer latitudes are noticeably less lonely than the colder ones. Hardware stores feel lonely while bookstores do not. Mornings are lonelier than afternoons, while the hours before dawn can be devastating. Vienna is lonelier than Paris or London, while Los Angeles is lonelier than San Francisco or Boston. The Atlantic Ocean is lonelier than the Pacific while the Caribbean is not lonely at all... — Jonathan Hull

Visual surprise is natural in the Caribbean; it comes with the landscape, and faced with its beauty, the sigh of History dissolves. — Derek Walcott

I built the ideal house down in the Caribbean. All Englishmen dream of leaving the rain of England and getting a place in the sun - out in the grounds with separate guest houses; that is the ideal scenario. — Robin Leach

Communism has established centres of infection ... No area in the world is as vital to American security as the Caribbean ... We need a massive injection of money to reset the country on its feet, and this injection can come only from our great, capable friend and neighbor the United States. — Francois Duvalier

Tobias Buckell combines old world with new in his novel CRYSTAL RAIN. While the rich cultures, drawn in part from Caribbean history and lore, echo a familiar landscape, he brings it out of the Earth milieu and into a bold new universe where technology and tradition collide. I enjoyed his colorful characters and musical use of language; his voice is fresh and entirely readable. — Karin Lowachee

The reader who is only superficially familiar with Caribbean affairs may find the materials of this volume strange. The extent to which violence, both open and covert, is a constant factor in the life of the region may cause surprise. The incongruous and rather unreal quality of many events, whether fanciful or farcical in appearance, may also prove unexpected. If the reader is inclined to doubt the authenticity of certain events, viewing them as too implausible to be true, he may be assured that many things even more strange, which are possibly and even probably true, have been omitted because their accuracy could not be satisfactorily established. Nothing is included here that does not come from sources considered sound. Nothing is included that has not been subjected to every possible verification. — Robert D. Crassweller

Again, some scholars try to exonerate Homo sapiens and blame climate change (which requires them to posit that, for some mysterious reason, the climate in the Caribbean islands remained static for 7,000 years while the rest of the western hemisphere warmed). But in America, the dung ball cannot be dodged. We are the culprits. There is no way around that truth. Even if climate change abetted us, the human contribution was decisive.7 Noah's — Yuval Noah Harari

What really swings is the music of the United States, Cuba, the Caribbean and vicinity, and, of course, Brazil. The rest is all waltzes. — Antonio Carlos Jobim

You can't hate the roots of the tree without ending up hating the tree. You can't hate your origin without ending up hating yourself. You can't hate the land, your motherland, the place that you come from, and we can't hate Africa without ending up hating ourselves. The Black man in the Western Hemisphere - North America, Central America, South America, and in the Caribbean - is the best example of how one can be made, skillfully, to hate himself that you can find anywhere on this earth. — Malcolm X

Canadian official multiculturalism has developed through the 1970s and '80s, and has become in the '90s a major part of Canadian political discourse in Canada rather than in the United States, which is also a multi-ethnic country, may be due to the lack of an assimilationist discourse so pervasive in the U.S. The melting pot thesis has not been popular in Canada, where the notion of a social and cultural mosaic has had a greater influence among liberal critics. This mosaic approach has not been compensated with an integrative politics of antiracism or of class struggle which is sensitive to the racialization involved in Canadian class formation. The organized labour movement in Canada has repeatedly displayed anti-immigrant sentiments. For any inspiration for an antiracist theorization and practice of class struggle Canadians have looked to the United States or the Caribbean. — Himani Bannerji

Those in Argentina, Mexico and Peru,
Colombia and the Caribbean
Bear La Mancha and Quixote in their hearts
For he is an ultimate and overlooked Don Juan. — Dejan Stojanovic

Faustina is a great work of the Creator. She has nothing of what you call brains; she doesn't need them for her destiny ... It is to be glorious for a few years: not to outlive some dull husband and live on his money till she is eighty, going to lectures and comparing the attractions of winter tours that offer the romance of the Caribbean. — Robertson Davies

Southern culture is vivified, made a culture, by the melding of influences that are held far more closely than in other, lesser parts of the country: in the Southland, the past is not really past, and the ancestral homelands are not so far away as they are elsewhere, paradoxically: the assimilation of Southerners, unlike the uneasy attempts at assimilation of Americans elsewhere, has created a culture in which the old influences in our blood, of the Ivory Coast, Languedoc, the Highlands, Wales, Antrim, and Devon, of Sephardic communities from Amsterdam to Cadiz, of the Caribbean sugar islands and Castile, have been absorbed into the fabric of New World life. — Markham Shaw Pyle

Columbus's real achievement was managing to cross the ocean successfully in both directions. Though an accomplished enough mariner, he was not terribly good at a great deal else, especially geography, the skill that would seem most vital in an explorer. It would be hard to name any figure in history who has achieved more lasting fame with less competence. He spent large parts of eight years bouncing around Caribbean islands and coastal South America convinced that he was in the heart of the Orient and that Japan and China were at the edge of every sunset. He never worked out that Cuba is an island and never once set foot on, or even suspected the existence of, the landmass to the north that everyone thinks he discovered: the United States. — Bill Bryson

Jack Sparrow: [empties bottle of rum] Why is the rum always gone? [stands up and staggers drunkenly] Oh... that's why. — Jack Sparrow

The problem with the law is that it's always there. There wasn't a vacation I took over the nine years I practiced - this was back in the dark ages - when I wasn't having faxes and FedExs literally sent to me on the beach in the Caribbean. I used to go on cruises not because I liked cruises, but because it was the one spot they couldn't get you. — Megyn Kelly

Musically, New York is a big influence on me. Walk down the street for five minutes and you'll hear homeless punk rockers, people playing Caribbean music and reggae, sacred Islamic music and Latino music, so many different types of music. — Moby

One of the problems with the first date is that you know very little about a person, so you overweight those few things that you do know,' the anthropologist and dating guru Helen Fisher told me. 'And suddenly you see they've got brown shoes, and you don't like brown shoes, so they're out. Or they don't like your haircut, so they're out. But if you were to get to know each other more, those particular characteristics might begin to recede in importance, as you also found that they had a great sense of humor or they'd love to go fishing in the Caribbean with you. — Aziz Ansari

I think if you say that art and politics, or religion and politics, mustn't mix, don't mix, that is itself a political statement. Even if you are writing a 19th-century novel where the money comes from a plantation in the Caribbean and you don't talk about that, that itself is a political thing. — Mohsin Hamid

There's no one here in America swimming the Pacific Ocean - or the Atlantic, or the Caribbean - to leave this place. The reason why is because of the freedom. Freedom for a man to mark out his own destiny. It's not, 'Hey, you have so much.' — Luke Scott

'Mvula' is my married name, but for some reason my nan calls me 'McVula.' I'm not sure if it's one of those jokey Caribbean things, or whether she's just getting it wrong. — Laura Mvula

Merengue is a fast rhythm, you know, and danceable. Bachata is like a slow, romantic Caribbean bolero. — Juan Luis Guerra

Since 1949, the United States has passed to Israel more than $100 billion in grants and $10 billion in special loans.36 Other bodies not part of the administration annually transfer to Israel $1 billion. This is larger than the amount of money transferred by the United States to North Africa, South America, and the Caribbean put together. — Noam Chomsky

It is a curious thing to be a woman in the Caribbean after you have been a woman in these United States. — Zora Neale Hurston

My mother is Afro-Caribbean and my father is Caucasian-American, and I was born in Pennsylvania and moved to the Cayman Islands when I was about 2. So I grew up there with my mother, and it's really all I know. I grew up there until it was time to go to college, and that's when I moved back to America. — Grace Gealey

When I wrapped 'Falling Skies,' I took a trip to the Caribbean to visit my grandma, which is great. I was out there for two weeks in Grenada. Then after that, I went to Poland for two and a half weeks to go watch some of the European soccer championships. — Brandon Jay McLaren

Separate vacations have become more popular among married couples. We don't think this is a good idea. Over time, doing your own thing will cause you to lead separate lives. We are not talking about a three-day trip to Florida with your sister or best friend - if you want to take small trips like this, feel free to. But if you want to take a major vacation - say, to spend two weeks in Europe - your husband should be your travel companion. But suppose your idea of a fun vacation is going to Europe or lying on the beach in the Caribbean, while your husband loves tours of historic sites and museums. Our advice is to figure out a way to do a little of both. One year, you can go to the beach, the next year you can do a tourist package together, or go on a trip with a beach near some sites of cultural interest. Once you start planning separate vacations, you become like roommates, not lovers. — Ellen Fein

Pirate Hunters is a fantastic book, an utterly engrossing and satisfying read. It tells the story of the hunt for the rare wreck of a pirate ship, which had been captained by one of the most remarkable pirates in history. This is a real-life Treasure Island, complete with swashbuckling, half-crazy treasure hunters and vivid Caribbean settings-a story for the ages. — Douglas Preston

Today many Caribbean workers can be found in the hospital, construction, service and hotel industries, but there is also a growing professional sector. — Charles B. Rangel

Lord Cutler Beckett: [Jack is about to light a cannon that's pointed at the mast] You're mad.

Jack Sparrow: Thank goodness for that, 'cause if I wasn't this would probably never work.

[fires the cannon, which catapults him onto his ship, landing safely on his feet behind his crew]

Jack Sparrow: And that was without even a single drop of rum. — Jack Sparrow

On February 8, 1928, known as Lindbergh day since it was the day he crossed the Atlantic Ocean the year before, Charles A. Lindbergh landed at the Campo Columbia airfield near Havana. Lindbergh had visited many countries in his plane, and he had the national flags of each country painted in the fuselage. Having flown from Haiti, on a Goodwill Tour of the Caribbean in his "Spirit of St. Louis," he had the Cuban flag painted on his a single-engine Ryan monoplane. It was the last country he visited before he donated the "Spirit of St. Louis" to the Smithsonian Institution, where it is still exhibited at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. — Hank Bracker

One of the most magical places on Earth is a small island in the Caribbean called Mustique. With brilliant beaches, warm water, and lush vegetation, this tiny green swath of land is my idea of paradise. — Nina Garcia

The Caribbean is the region in the Americas worst affected by the epidemic of NCDs. These diseases are responsible for over two- thirds of deaths, much sickness and ill health, resulting in an unsustainable burden on our fragile economies. — Freundel Stuart

Will Turner: That's not true. I am not obsessed with treasure.

Jack Sparrow: Not all treasure is silver and gold, mate. — Jack Sparrow

Pirates are the very essence of profit maximising entrepreneurs described in neoclassical economics. Yet, whilst films such as 'The Pirates of the Caribbean' and 'Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid' have gone a long way to popularise both pirates and outlaw behaviour, the truth of the matter is that piracy is illegal, and it kills. — Peter Middlebrook

I read about the rising tide of illegal drug cartels moving their products from more developed countries to the United States, while using the Caribbean as a conduit. My home is Jamaica, and I'm a former international flight attendant, so I began to think about how I could use my personal background to spotlight issues surrounding the illicit drug trade, while also drawing in readers with a captivating story. — Norma Jennings

Kochi, formerly called Cochin, is a former European settlement with a large Christian population and a seafaring heritage. It is a town of enormous charm that reminds some visitors of the Caribbean more than India. — Gary Weiss

That's what a poem is. Words which have a hidden meaning. A poem is like a secret. — Monique Roffey

Nicaragua is becoming the least expensive Caribbean destination ... — Arthur Frommer

The scarcity of data is due in part to the familiar problems of gathering information on homosexuality, but it is also a result of the difficulty plaguing research endeavors on Caribbean piracy. Not only was the corpse of the last potential interviewee dipped in tar and chained to a gibbet between flood marks at Wapping Stairs when George II was King of England, but the usual literary remnants particular to subjects of historical investigation were never extant for the cadre of illiterate and inarticulate sea rovers. — B.R. Burg

Is this seat taken?" she asked him again, tapping on a chair at the table.
"That's where my Rum is sitting. He is my guest!"
"But the bottle is in your hand, and not in this chair," she spoke, pointing out the bottle.
"So, it is!" he answered, looking at his Rum. Then, looking back at her: "But he was invited to this party. — Ted Anthony Roberts

The war on drugs is not being won, and it continues to threaten stability and democracy not only in the Andes but throughout the Caribbean as well, where tiny police and military forces are outclassed by the sophisticated equipment in the hands of traffickers passing through the region on the way to their market in this country. — Elliott Abrams

I eat everything, that's a problem. I don't have discipline. My favorite dish is the Caribbean. Meat, rice, lots of grains. But I do like to do exercises. Lately, I've been having capoeira classes and lots of cardiovascular exercises, such as jogging and cycling. — Ricky Martin

In Caribbean there is no middle class: you're either rich or you're poor. And the ladder to success is not really a ladder, it's a chain; once you reach a certain level, you can't go back and you can only keep going forward. — Zoe Saldana

Un(der)known Writers: Flavia Dzodan By The New Inquiry Few words define The Netherlands better than "imperialist". In a time of white appropriations of post colonial theory, few pause to realize that no post colonial analysis is possible while we live in a country where the "post" lays within a distant future (i.e. The Netherlands still holds colonial territories in the Caribbean). — Anonymous

If Caribbean writers have one single unifying theme, it is a strong sense of place, and of home. There is also - always, beneath the humour, which is a West Indian characteristic - a sadness: an awareness of a past that can never really be forgotten, or forgiven. — Malcolm Bradbury

[The is] a mistaken belief that [the word Indian] refers somehow to the country, India. When Columbus washed up on the beach in the Caribbean, he was not looking for a country called India. Europeans were calling that country Hindustan in 1492 ... Columbus called the tribal people he met "Indio," from the Italian in dio, meaning "in God." — Russell Means

It always amuses me that the biggest praise for my work comes for the imagination, while the truth is that there's not a single line in all my work that does not have a basis in reality. The problem is that Caribbean reality resembles the wildest imagination. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

The most important obstacle to speed and ease of assimilation, however, is race. In the nineteenth century, swarthy Jews, "black" Irish, and Italian "guineas" - a not so subtle euphemism borrowed from the African country of Guinea - were all seen as what we today call "people of color." These immigrants terrified lighter-skinned native-born Americans, who accepted the newcomers as "white" only when they - actually, their descendants - began to earn middle-class incomes. Of course, skin color does not affect an immigrant's ability to absorb American culture. But color can play a large part in hindering economic and social assimilation: today's black newcomers, from the Caribbean and elsewhere, are often treated as part of the African-American population, with all the associated disadvantages. — Tamar Jacoby

Jack Sparrow: How did you get here?

Will Turner: Sea turtles, mate. A pair of them strapped to my feet.

Jack Sparrow: Not so easy, is it? — Jack Sparrow

The chief character in this narrative is the Caribbean Sea, one of the world's most alluring bodies of water, a rare gem among the oceans, defined by the islands that form a chain of lovely jewels to the north and east — James A. Michener

If there is any sea as blue as the Caribbean I have never beheld it, and when it is seen at twilight, it is most spectacular, but then you will hear more of this later, for I have had much time to contemplate the color of this sea. On — Anne Rice