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.

Americans are not brought up with meter. They're not brought up with poetry. If you try to get them to recite, they're too embarrassed.

The English language is nobody's special property. It is the property of the imagination: it is the property of the language itself.

You can't write drunk.

A culture, we all know, is made by its cities.

We read, we travel, we become.

How can I turn from Africa and live?