"What right did these white people have to be here in the first place, stealing our land and making our people slaves? And now they have the audacity to try to buy us back from the French like we are nothing more than property?"

"We live in a world where the powerful can do what they want and the rest of us just have to accept it"

"It is not only a question of whether the American way of life is superior, but whether the American way of life is sustainable. Can we really continue to exploit the resources of the Caribbean for our own benefit without consequences?"

"People often forget that they too are subject to the whims of the sea, that their flesh and bone can be pulled down and swallowed up just like anything else. But the sea remembers. It remembers everything, from the smallest broken shell to the largest sunken ship."

"Tiphanie Yanique's writing is like a warm embrace from a wise and insightful friend."

"Tiphanie Yanique's voice is a siren song, pulling you in with its beauty and urgency, and leaving you transformed.""

"America is not the only country in the world, nor is it the best. It is a new country, with new ways, but it is not the only way, nor is it the best way."

"I cannot explain to you the sensation of drowning. Suffice it to say that it is not peaceful, not tranquil, not even very dramatic, but rather an ongoing tragedy of gargling, choking, spewing out water, gasping for breath."

"We all have our own island, the one we carry with us wherever we go."

"We had cruise ships tell us that they wouldn't come in (to United States Virgin Islands) if we had (COVID-19) positivity rates over 3%. And now we have a 20% positivity rate and they still want to come in. We are more of a danger to them than they are to us."

"I think that the cultivation of the humane letters has the most distinct bearing on the cultivation and appreciation of science. Science is nothing without imagination; and imagination is most readily kept fresh by literature. What little good there is a mere descriptive person, and in the small facts which with painful toil he accumulates. But let these facts be welded together by thought, their bearing traced by imagination, experiments devised by the mind projecting itself in advance of them, and the plodder is likely to become the great discoverer."

"I declare I hold [physicians] to be true heroes, when I regard their hard existence, their pure pathetic lives; when I recall their cheerfulness and manliness; when I see them, generously forgetful of self, answering every call with alacrity; when I think of the warm heart that beats so steadfastly under the fuzzy damp coat; when I know that the lantern that guides them in a dark night to the house of distress is but like their own calm purpose and resolve shining forth to guide and comfort others."

"I accept that you live with remorse every day of your life but I live with tragedy every day of my life. She was a terrific kid. She was a wonderful person and I miss her all the time. I accept your apology. I forgive you. However, I cannot give your release my endorsement. To give that a blessing would be a betrayal of my sister's life."

"Big hands, big feet, big disappointment."

"I'm not sure sophisticated comedy has a place on television any more … I'd like to think it still does … But I'm not sure the networks are interested, I'm not sure anybody else is interested in sophisticated comedy any more."