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Quotes by Jamaican Authors
"With confidence, you have won before you have started."
"Whenever my body heals and the pain and all the swelling goes away is when I'll be ready."
"A woman once held a Canary in the palm of her hand and stroked her and whispered a careful warning. The canary, seeking some freedom to fly, went into the mine while the woman watched in worry. The mine was filled with toxic gases and the Canary began to sing. She flew into danger, realized the threats around her, and wished to return to a place of refuge."
"He actually came up to me and we started speaking. And from that conversation we were able to come to a meeting of the minds and it seemed as if it was clear to me that he wanted to do similar things to what I wanted to do."
"What have I to prove, and to whom, and why? I'm keen enough to want nothing more than to live a simple, humble, unfettered life."
"He studied the woman before him, not as lovely as she once was, ordinary in appearance, scarred by living, abandoned by many, breathtakingly to be near and altogether unforgettable. "I have no friends," she spoke forth hauntingly. "I am alone." He couldn't believe it. But then he could for the rare creature near enough to touch was out of their league. She wasn't envied for the shallowness of appearance or the superficiality of status or possessions; she was envied for being uncommon and for possessing indomitable strength, something only a lifetime of suffering could shape."
"Bravery is the ability to endure, even unto death, all types of terrible, terrifying and painful situations and we live in a time when people do all that they can to avoid hardship and pain, never realizing that strength and courage is found in both."
"I want to give as many Canadians the opportunity to be successful and if we can use their athletic gifts to get them a free degree or a free diploma across the border then I guess I'm doing my job."
"I think that by and large chess players have been very kind. Like I said there have been a few incidents, but they certainly didn't serve to bring me down any."
"The world needs them - the ones who absorb the emotions of others, which diminishes their pain and disquietude and the world also uses them as a repository for confessions, secrets, grudges and indignation. They will leave these uncommon and intuitive individuals feeling unburdened themselves while the unusual individual will be weighed down by having taken on those burdens in addition to their own. The world needs them but what they need is something as aberrant as themselves, and that is silence, stillness and rest."
"If a man is not faithful to his own individuality, he cannot be loyal to anything."
"Some things you sentence yourself to life for."
"He wasn't yours to get hurt by. He was someone else's and you knew that, so why are you offended? What right do you have to be hurt when you were a part of the deception (lying by omission)?"
"She used to wander through the past as often as it beckoned her, bemoaning the loss of nostalgia. Then, for a while, she turned from it, blissfully free of its noxious clutch, and now it's back, taunting her with what she left behind, knowing she can never recapture what's gone."
"Leaving the familiar for unknown terrain is like a death - and feeling this level of finality should snap one back to life for life has greater meaning in the face of death."
"I travel the garden of music, thru inspiration. It's a large, very large garden, seen?"
"Working on my own gave me a chance to take my time and experiment a lot."
"Nations, like plants and human beings, grow. And if the development is thwarted they are dwarfed and overshadowed."
"Marriage is the connecting of the two: Without passion it's just friendship, without friendship it's just lust."
"Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our minds!"
"Upon the clothes behind the tenement, That hang like ghosts suspended from the lines, Linking each flat, but to each indifferent, Incongruous and strange the moonlight shines."
"Men who are in earnest are not afraid of consequences."
"If you get down and quarell everyday, you're saying prayers to the devil, I say."
"Who knows you more...your friend or your enemy? It's your enemy that pursues with passion while your friend engages at leisure."
"I regard the Klan, the Anglo-Saxon clubs and White American societies, as far as the Negro is concerned, as better friends of the race than all other groups of hypocritical whites put together."
"While struggling with all the loss in her life, she mournfully thought, "If only I could forget..." But that would be too easy, wouldn't it? However, she did with most; she never got too close and she never stayed too long, but there she was...struggling with all the loss in her life."
"If I blink she'll disappear," he told her. She looked at him and said,"Maybe that is the best thing for you."
"God is like the sun. When the sun shines, it shines for everyone. God is for everyone."
"She never wants to get to the point where she looks forward to hearing from someone. Once you look forward to something, you're inevitably let down and nothing can stay the same so she'd rather expect nothing at all and just be surprised that she was thought of at all."
"Don't focus on her hiss. Remember her purr."
"My music fights against the system that teaches to live and die."
"There was once a spirited feral mustang broken in by her stern rider. It was a harmonious relationship for the most part but, like any relationship, she tested the boundaries he placed on her and threw him...Would the rider, having suffered his own wound, retaliate, discipline or forgive?"
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