Kwesi Johnson Quotes & Sayings

Tell us what it is to be a woman so that we may know what it is to be a man. What moves at the margin. What it is to have no home in this place. To be set adrift from the one you knew. What it is to live at the edge of towns that cannot bear your company. — Toni Morrison

Every single experience, every single thing that's happened in my life, struggle, obstacle, trials and tribulations, I think they've all molded me to become the character and the person who I am. — Apolo Ohno

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. — Linton Kwesi Johnson

There's nothing quite like a real ... train conductor to add color to a quotidian commute — Anita Diament

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. — Linton Kwesi Johnson

Unusual weather for New York City. Today it was 68 and foggy. No, wait a minute, that's me. I'm sorry, that's me. — David Letterman

I have never, ever sought validation from the arbiters of British poetic taste. — Linton Kwesi Johnson

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. — Linton Kwesi Johnson

It was an axiom of "containment" that no part of the known world could be considered neutral. "Neutralism" was among the Cold Warriors' gravest curse words, applied with caustic hostility to India and even France. Those who were not with were against, subjected to intense economic and ideological and sometimes military pressure to fall into line. — Christopher Hitchens

That the language of the poetry of Jamaican music is rastafarian or biblical language cannot simply be put down to the colonizer and his satanic missionaries. The fact is that the historical experience of the black Jamaican is an experience of the most acute human suffering, desolation and despair in the cruel world that is the colonial world ... — Linton Kwesi Johnson

I am often asked why I started to write poetry. The answer is that my motivation sprang from a visceral need to creatively articulate the experiences of the black youth of my generation, coming of age in a racist society. — Linton Kwesi Johnson

I wrote two poems about the '81 uprisings: 'Di Great Insohreckshan' and 'Mekin Histri.' I wrote those two poems from the perspective of those who had taken part in the Brixton riots. The tone of the poem is celebratory because I wanted to capture the mood of exhilaration felt by black people at the time. — Linton Kwesi Johnson

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. — Linton Kwesi Johnson

Younger people are discovering my work, even though my reggae is not like theirs. — Linton Kwesi Johnson

Awake, my St. John! leave all meaner things To low ambition and the pride of kings. Let us (since life can little more supply Than just to look about us, and to die) Expatiate free o'er all this scene of man; A mighty maze! but not without a plan. — Alexander Pope

A patient had a 50-50 chance of benefiting from visiting a physician as of 1910. Medicine was more like voodoo than science until the 20th Century. — Abraham Flexner

Writing was a political act and poetry was a cultural weapon. — Linton Kwesi Johnson

The modern stuff, I can take it or leave it. I like its danceability, but the DJs talk a lot of nonsense. — Linton Kwesi Johnson

The main premise of appreciative inquiry is that positive questions, focusing on strengths and assets, tend to yield more effective results than negative questions focusing on problems or deficits. — Warren Berger

The beauty of today may not be realised until it becomes tomorrow's memory — Steven Aitchison

The story of life is INCONCLUSIVE but it is all about an everlasting future. — Delma Pryce

The popular music of Jamaica, the music of the people, is an essentially experiential music, not merely in the sense that the people experience the music, but also in the sense that the music is true to the historical experience, that the music reflects the historical experience. It is the spiritual expression of the historical experience of the Afro-Jamaican. — Linton Kwesi Johnson

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. — Linton Kwesi Johnson