Quotes from Fred D'Aguiar

I think poetry can lead to policy, and I can hear the laughter when I say that.

When you walk to the end of a fiction, its procedure is 1) intuitive; and 2) emotional. Its intelligence is emotional, I think.

If you're just mired in privilege, there's nothing to learn; learning appears to be over.

Whenever I went to an historical moment that was sad or where something terrible happened, it was, for me, a learning moment, a teaching moment for those who survived.

With kids, they force you to get out of bed. They force you to smile. They remind you of spontaneity.

People seem very comfortable having a kind of Cheesecake Factory-type of life.

Any place where their thoughts are not allowed to stray is guarded by his voices steering them back to the permitted pastures. Any sadness or longing is immediately burned from the mind by the steady flame of his teachings in his voice. Sadness, depression, longings are luxuries. How can any sane mind be sad at the prospect of the kingdom of heaven, unless the sadness is merely impatience?

A child screams with joy and a child screams with pain, and the difference is in the timbre of that scream. Decibels of joy strike the inner ear differently from those of pain.

While the body may be trapped in this place, the mind is always free to roam wherever it feels safe.

against disease.

I love the fact that I can go to a museum now that tells me I'm in the postmodern age.