Journalists

"What I took away and have taken away — and it still overrides everything that I have done in journalism since — what the Kennedy assassination did for me was forever keep me aware of the fragility of everything, that, on any given moment, something could happen."

"I’m Jim Lehrer. Terrorists used hijacked airliners to kill Americans on this September 11, 2001 … another day of infamy for the United States of America."

"People can get their news any way they want. What I love about what’s happened is that there are so many different avenues, there are so many different outlets, so many different ways to debate and discuss and to inquire about any given news story. If people want bells and whistles and all of that, there are bells and whistles available. If they don’t want bells and whistles there are places to go where they are not available. I am in favor of everything. Everyone should get their news however they want to and in whatever form they want. I’m not going to sit back in judgment of other people and the way they do it. If Letterman tells a joke with a piece of information in it that you didn’t know before, that’s fine with me, that doesn’t bother me. I mean, my God, you’ve got to get it off a serious news program or it doesn’t count? I don’t believe that for a second … If we don’t have an informed electorate we don’t have a democracy. So I don’t care how people get the information, as long as they get it. I’m just doing it my particular way and I feel lucky I can do it the way I want to do it."

"What struck Broz most about Kardelj was his steadfastness and his calm, equable temperament. He was also favorably impressed by the quiet efficiency with which he did his work. Efficiency was a quality by which Broz set great store. 'Kardelj was so quiet,' he said many years later, 'that you hardly noticed him at first; but decisions were made, aims were achieved, and then you realized that it was he who had made the proposal, persuaded others to accept it, and put it into effect. No setback dismayed him. He was free of pretense and bluff. He eschewed fractionalism. His mind dwelt on essentials. After my first meeting with him I had no doubt that he was an honest man and a true revolutionary.'"

"Kardelj had had many years of preparation for his postWorld War II role as theoretician of Yugoslav socialism. There was a two-year internship, from late 1934 to early 1937, first as a student, then as a lecturer of MarxismLeninism, in the USSR. There were the prison confinements in Yugoslavia (in Pozarevac from 1930 to 1932 and two detentions in Liubljana in 1938) which allowed time to read and meditate. Such prison stays seem to have been particularly productive spiritually and intellectually for political detainees. During these internments Kardelj reviewed literature on Slovene history and formulated his seminal work, Razvoj slovenskega narodnega vprasanja ("The Development of the Slovene National Question"), which was published in 1939 under the pseudonym of Sperans."

"Selvon's London works...span a crucial period in the literary and cultural history of black Britain. His experimentations with language and form in his London works were to be a major influence on a later generation of writers as he lifted his immigrant characters out of the stereotypical straitjackets imposed on them and created an alternative way of seeing and reading that world. Selvon's city is a mongrel city, a mishmash of languages, people and identities jangling with each other and vying for a place. It is a world which anticipated by many years the literary visions of a multicultural and postcolonial London created in works such as Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses, Diran Adebayo's Some Kind of Black or Monica Ali's Brick Lane."

"There is a saying that I like, "When the pot was cooking you wasn't in the kitchen." So now, Ken, you are suggesting that I contrived during my creative process to have Tiger and Urmilla living near Joe and Rita but that wasn't planned in my mind when I was writing the book. The fact that Joe happened to be a Black man is quite incidental. To many Trinidadians it would appear that I deliberately made this set-up. I do not work this way. I have never worked this way. I start a book and I allow this creativity/charisma that writers are supposed to have to do its thing."

"In the early Tiger books, there is a sensitive and even painful probing of the Indian sense of self. An Island Is a World is an even more searing treatment. One values the impishness of the Moses books and, of course, the grand "federation" experiment of the all-ah-we-is-one Caribbean reality executed, most appropriately by language, in The Lonely Londoners. It is around this point in Sam's writing that he begins to veer away from the particular in favor of a "Pan-Caribbean perspective." He only returns to the Tiger motif at the end of his life through an unfinished novel, a fragment of which deals with "free paper"-the pass that Indians had to carry when they left the estates of their indenture. This is published as the short story "Turning Christian." My point is that here was Sam, almost at the end of his life, struggling to reopen that vein in his writing which probed the Indian sensibility, and invoking the humiliation of the pass-system that existed as a condition of Indian serfdom. This was not standard in all the territories of indenture, but it did occur in Trinidad. I can't help but wonder about what would have happened if he had not been waylaid by the simplistic falsehood of the all-ah-we-is-one agenda and had continued to explore the Tiger-type character. Or even integrated both-because Sam really belonged, unlike Naipaul, to both worlds. Yet ideologically, as "Three into Two Won't Go" so eloquently expresses, he positioned himself within the "progressive" agenda of mixing and merging and inventing a true-true Caribbean creolized self, and my question really is, at what cost to his writing? Or how did this facilitate his writer's agenda?"

"When a writer is writing, it should be approached with a certain amount of innocence and when a writer loses that innocence he ceases to be a writer as far as I am concerned. Therefore I deliberately cultivate a certain measure of ignorance about everything in order to allow the innocence to feel its way into a situation or issue."

"The slave (Black) and the indenture (Indian) have always fascinated me because in spite of what is happening in Trinidad today it is my belief- tinged as it is with more and more disillusionment as the years go by- that a very strong human bond existed between these two factions though it has become more and more fragmentary."

"I would like to be identified as an individual writer. I hate comparisons. My work has been compared to Steinbeck for example, and I have been called the Steinbeck of the West Indies, but that means nothing to me. When a reader says "I hear Selvon's voice," that satisfies me - whether they think Selvon is right or wrong. I can take adverse criticism as well as the praiseful. What I find in my writing is my identity and personality, and people's views that what I say is right or wrong becomes less important to me because in my writing I am being my own self."

"the greatest and therefore the most important folk poet the British Caribbean has yet produced."

"I would certainly feel that they should not forget their past, their background, where they come from. I have always remained Trinidadian myself. I know where I come from, and I know that by race I am mixed. I am predominately East Indian, I know that, but that doesn't stop me from formulating my own philosophy or my own psychological approach as to how I'm going to assimilate myself into the culture. I don't know which is best, but I would certainly hope that they would not forget their past or turn a blind eye to the origins of the whole thing. I don't think that you can build a future without using the past, and I don't think that they should try to forget their origins at all. But certainly I think they should make some effort to assimilate into the society in which they have to live day by day. Are we going to have just ghettos of people who are living completely apart?"

"I would like to see writers writing about movement from one island to the other. I don't really want a novel about Trinidad. I want the characters to move and go up to UWI [University of the West Indies] in Jamaica and spend a week in Barbados—have friends in Barbados, have friends in Cuba. This is what I’m hoping to do in the new novel."

"I think that I am representative of what I always say is a third race in Trinidad. We talk about the blacks and the Indians being the two races there. But there is a third race who are people from my generation who grew up Westernized, who still remain what they are because you can't change yourself, but who have adopted a way of life which tries to work and operate between the two races and who are Creolized, as it were, and who see themselves more as West Indians than as perhaps belonging to people who originally came from India...They are more Westernized and they are creating a nation out of this mixture. I'm not the only one. Very few people talk about that third race, but that is a race that exists. I know that it exists, and that is the race that I am putting my hopes on for any future for Trinidad."

"[about the kind of English he used in his novels] it seemed to me that the only way to give expression to what happened to the original immigrant was by using this idiom, this language form that he brought with him. There was no other way. I tried to write The Lonely Londoners in Standard English and it just would not work, and when I got into the Trinidad way of speaking the whole thing seemed to flow so easily and everything seemed to come to life. This idiom is so much a part of the people, so much a part of the characteristics of the people, that you cannot separate a language from the experiences."

"People didn’t know what part of the world I came from and that was something that I felt ought to be corrected. Those days in England—in the fifties and so on—the only country in the Caribbean people spoke about was Jamaica. You never heard them talking about places like Barbados, Trinidad, Tobago and so on…"

"when this immigration happened, for the first time the Trinidadian got to know the Jamaican or the Barbadian, because in the islands themselves the communications were so bad that they never really got in touch with one another, they never got to know what happened in other islands. And it was only when they all came to London that this turned out to be a kind of meeting place where the Jamaican met the Trinidadian and the Barbadian and they got to know one another, they got to identify in a way as a people coming from a certain part of the world. Not so much as islanders, no, but as black immigrants living in the city of London. And so they got together, and it's a very strange thing that they had to move out of their own part of the world, and it was only when they came to London that this kind of identity happened to them. (Q: What effect did this have on the West Indies?) Well, in a way this kind of unity of the islanders that happened in London reflected back to the Caribbean to some extent I think. And even people down there in that part of the world began to think of, at least of the immigrants who had travelled all this way into London, that they had all come from one part of the world. I think in this way it helped to make all the islanders feel as if they all belonged to one region of the world."

"It is...a much more ambitious concept to try and get a national feeling among the English-speaking Caribbean writers. This is not just my dream because they've tried it already with the Federation in the late forties. I myself was very disappointed when that fell through. (Q: Why do you think it broke down?) Selvon: Well, I think it's just because we couldn't agree among ourselves. There was all this bickering. Trinidad feels that it's a better island than Jamaica, and Jamaica feels it's the biggest English-speaking island. They want everything to happen over there, and Barbados doesn't want to have anything to do with it. That sort of petty rivalry that goes on has been keeping us apart for years and years. I think we are slowly growing out of that now, and we are able, at least, to get together and talk more about what will be done for the area as a whole. In fact, it is already, in a way, in practice with trade agreements going on between the islands and so on."

"The American language is almost, in its way, a kind of experimental form, too, with the English language…"

"I paid very little respect to the rules, purely because I'm ignorant of them. Intuitively I found that if I was succeeding by my primitive way, I would continue to use it. That way, I also feel that I do maintain some kind of individuality in my work. For me the best pleasure I get out of writing is for someone to be able to say that that's a Selvon novel or that's a Selvon short story. I've always felt that if I probed too deeply and started to become knowledgeable about what the novel is, I would lose that individuality. Whether it is good or bad-that's something else. Should I sit"

"I grew up in Trinidad speaking the way Trinidadians talk. That remained with me throughout all my years living abroad. I found that it was so much easier for me to express myself if I could use the Trinidadian form of the language rather than trying to speak “proper English”, as it’s called…"

"One grim winter evening, when it had a kind of unrealness about London, with a fog sleeping restlessly over the city and the lights showing in the blur as if is not London at all but some strange place on another planet, Moses Aloetta hop on a number 46 bus at the corner of Chepstow Road and Westbourne Grove to go to Waterloo to meet a fellar who was coming from Trinidad on the boat-train."

"a man could tell you a lot about what he's going to do tomorrow, but when the time come he ain't done one arse"

"Irony, it seems to me, has always been present in West Indian writing. It is integral to West Indian life as a whole. Survival itself is ironic. When you look at calypso, which is a form of oral literature, it is chock full with irony, and it's been there from the very beginning. Just to survive in the Caribbean, you have to be ironic, and it becomes part of one's range of expression, including humor. It is the tragicomedy of someone like Samuel Selvon (another important influence), a capacity for irony that was in Selvon's work from the very beginning, even before he moved to London to write Lonely Londoners, for instance."

"living in Canada, which is a developing country, I feel almost part of going along with the development, whereas in England I felt that there was already so much tradition established here, that I was imposing on it, whereas in Canada, I feel I am actually helping to build it."

"I’d rather stay in ignorance. Mark you, it may be true that I am repeating something that has been said before, but in the actual creation it wasn’t so to me, because in my ignorance I didn’t know. So I think that ignorance helps a lot. When you know that somebody has done something before, it hampers you."

"I do not feel that I express my thoughts and views as well as I would like to in interviews and public statements, and I prefer to be read than heard. If I have anything significant to say on any issue it is to be found inside my novels and stories."

"On New Year's Day, 1939, while Trinidadians who had money or hopes of winning money were attending the races in the Queen's Park Savannah, Port of Spain, a number of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution in Europe landed on the island."

"I feel that any contribution that I have to make as a writer should be directed towards our own culture, and most of the writers I know are disappointed at the fact that while our potential has been appreciated and used abroad, nothing has been done at home."

"Every morning when Foster awoke, it was the same thing. The world spun in his brain. The world spun in his brain, and he imagined the island of Trinidad, eleven and a half degrees north of the equator. He saw it on a globe, with the Americas sprawled like giant shadows above and below, and the endless Atlantic lapping the coastlines of the continents and the green islands of the Caribbean. The globe spun and he saw Great Britain and Europe, and Africa. The eastern countries, Australia. Foster imagined Trinidad as it was, a mere dot on the globe. But he saw himself in the dot. He saw himself in the dot, and he transmitted thoughts into the universe. He was lying down on the dot and thoughts radiated from him like how RKO introduce their films with a radio station broadcasting into space."

"I think that this is a kind of dilemma that doesn't face just one individual. I think it's a dilemma that faces any number of people who move out of one culture into another, particularly people from Third World countries because of their color, who move into white societies to settle. And I think that they have this problem of how they are going to identify themselves. Are they going to keep their original identity or keep their roots, or are they going to allow themselves to be assimilated completely into their new culture?"

"I don't rightly recollect when it was the idea of going back home hit me. It could of been one time of any time when I was down in the dumps, my back aching from bending down to pick up the apples that fall when my cart upset. But I could tell you one thing for sure, that down there in that grimy basement in Shepherd's Bush, feeling like a trapped animal while my erstwhile lackey Bob and his bride Jeannie occupied my pent-house on the top floor, it was not hard to wish for a change of scenery and circumstances. And topping that was the daily dread that the pigs would come a-knocking at the basement where Galahad and Brenda conducted their Black Power party affairs, to arrest somebody for something, or merely to give me the shivers."

"It was Sir Galahad who drew my attention to the property. He was reading Dalton's Weekly, as was his wont, looking for new jobs; roaming through bedsitter land; picking out secondhand miscellany he need and could afford; musing on the lonely hearts column to see if any desperate rich white woman seeks black companion with a view to matrimony; and speculating when he come to the properties-for-sale page, buying houses and renovating them to sell and make big profit. Little did he dream that whilst he dreamt I was on the lookout for an investment in truth."

"There is a short spell during the year in Trinidad when a kind of twilight comes between the sudden shift from light to dark. Actually, there is no such thing as twilight in the island, but for a week or so before the rainy season starts the daylight lingers for an extra hour. Candleflies flicker in the gloaming, birds wing across a sky reflecting yet another brilliant sunset, and cicadas relieve one another in making a continuous buzz to herald the wet months that are to follow. The buzzing starts as a spluttering, jerky sound, as if the creature was trying the notes of the scale at random, until it settles for a middle C and buzzes for a long minute. Astonishing the energy stored in that little body, for the droning is loud and clear. But more remarkable the continuity, for hardly does one stop than another begins a short distance away as if by pre-arranged signal, and no link slips from the chain of sound they maintain from dawn to dusk."

"I think we have to make a very important distinction between belief and knowledge. And this is something that I think is lost these days, particularly in the news media. There's actually a difference between (and we should draw attention to it when it's transgressed) [...] what we know [and] what we're expected to believe, or told to believe."

"There is something very strange and new and different that is occupying all the places where the left used to be and so these stories, it didn't really matter that they weren't true but they were weaponized, if you like, in this narrative about Canada as an irredeemably racist white colonial apartheid settler state."

"In these impoverished conditions, it's much easier for journalists to construe events in such a way as to uphold an ideologically rigid "narrative" than to go about the hard work of building true stories from the construction material of hard facts."

"What I worry about is that the truth doesn't matter, and I think this is something that has changed from 20 years ago, it's not just that the truth doesn't matter anymore, it's that it doesn't matter that the truth doesn't matter anymore. [...] I also think that people really do want some kind of an honest assessment of things that are important. Of something grounded in fact. I think that is something that is actually necessary for a liberal democracy to function."

"Canada harbours its own disgraceful legacy. Down through the decades, scores of federal and provincial laws isolated, dispossessed and ghettoized one racial or ethnic minority after another. Asians weren't allowed to vote in Canada until the late 1940s; federally-registered Indians had to wait until 1960... For Canada’s young Aboriginal people, it’s not clear that the arc of the moral universe is even bending in their direction at all."

"have no recourse to anything like an . The Communist Party decides if you’re guilty or innocent. The conviction rate stands in excess of 98 per cent. Torture and are commonplace. Xi has lately embarked on a vicious campaign of harassment and intimidation of activists, ethnic and religious minorities, and feminists. Scores of human rights lawyers have been rounded up and jailed."

"You've got one journalist — who knows? Was it an interrogation? Was he assassinated? Were there rogue elements? Who did it?...You’ve got $100 billion worth of arms sales...we cannot alienate our biggest player in the Middle East. (16 October 2018)"

"For those who are screaming blood for the Saudis — look, these people are key allies, [...] we've got an arms deal that everybody wanted a piece of ... it'll be a lot of jobs, a lot of money come to our coffers. It's not something you want to blow up willy-nilly. (15 October 2018)"

"The Arab world needs a modern version of the old transnational media so citizens can be informed about global events. More important, we need to provide a platform for Arab voices. We suffer from poverty, mismanagement and poor education. Through the creation of an independent international forum, isolated from the influence of nationalist governments spreading hate through propaganda, ordinary people in the Arab world would be able to address the structural problems their societies face."

"It was painful for me several years ago when several friends were arrested. I said nothing. I didn’t want to lose my job or my freedom. I worried about my family. I have made a different choice now. I have left my home, my family and my job, and I am raising my voice. To do otherwise would betray those who languish in prison. I can speak when so many cannot. I want you to know that Saudi Arabia has not always been as it is now. We Saudis deserve better."

"Jamal Khashoggi, the journalist who had written excited dispatches from the front lines of the Afghan war, was back in Jeddah, working as the deputy editor of the English-language daily Arab News. He still believed in political Islam, but he had never espoused violence and he especially opposed Muslims killing other Muslims. This was what divided the world of Islam: those who believed in letting others live and those who didn’t. Osama bin Laden had been Jamal’s friend; they had spent time together in Peshawar and in Afghanistan. Jamal had been one of the first to interview the tall, lanky, rich Saudi. In 1995, Khashoggi, acting as a kind of unofficial intermediary for Bin Laden’s family back in Saudi Arabia, had tried to persuade Bin Laden to publicly renounce his campaign against the Saudi establishment and denounce violence inside the kingdom. The violent sahwa was just beginning. Bin Laden, who was living in Sudan by then, running a training camp for militants, refused. Jamal left, exasperated. After 9/11, Jamal described Bin Laden as living in a fantasyland of terror. He wrote a mea culpa on his personal website, saying the kingdom wasn’t even trying to understand what had led fifteen Saudis to become hijackers."

"When I speak of the fear, intimidation, arrests and public shaming of intellectuals and religious leaders who dare to speak their minds, and then I tell you that I’m from Saudi Arabia, are you surprised?"

"I always found it ironic when a Saudi official bashes Islamists, given that Saudi Arabia is the mother of all political Islam — and even describes itself as an in its “ Higher Law.” (We avoid the term “constitution” because of its secular interpretation and often say that the Koran is our constitution.)"

"We are going through a major economic transformation that is supported by the people, a transformation that will free us from total dependence on oil and restore a culture of work and production."

"We are not opposed to our government and care deeply about Saudi Arabia. It is the only home we know or want. Yet we are the enemy."