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Fred D'Aguiar

Fred D'Aguiar Quotes

Poet

Fred D'Aguiar is a British poet born on February 2, 1960. His works are known for their profound social commentary and exploration of colonial history.

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All Ifs Kind People Thinking Lessons Feelings Firsts I Can Moments Persons

Famous Fred D'Aguiar Quotes

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

Inspirational Mind Freedom Safety

Book:Children of Paradise

Source: Children of Paradise

“At bottom, I'm a cheerful person.”

Persons Bottom Cheerful

Author:Fred D'Aguiar

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

Kids Force Bed Spontaneity

Author:Fred D'Aguiar

“Once I became historically aware, I realized there are these formative moments of history tied around tragedy and disaster and sacrifice, that led people to survive and take stock and move on with some kind of notion of betterment.”

People Kind Moments Moving Sacrifice Tragedy Notion I Realized Disaster Tied Betterment

Author:Fred D'Aguiar

“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.”

Moments Happened Teaching Terrible Historical Survived

Author:Fred D'Aguiar

“I found it instructive and highly constructive as a writer to go to a point of disaster and come out with a feel for it and then some sort of a lesson based on feeling.”

Feels Feelings Found Lessons Disaster Constructive

Author:Fred D'Aguiar

“Because I write intuitively and image-by-image and moment-by-moment, my writing has to be powered by feelings and emotions.”

Writing Moments Feelings Emotion Feelings And Emotions

Author:Fred D'Aguiar

“I can't stay engaged for years with a book unless it has feelings. It can't be an idea for me - it has to be a felt thing.”

Years I Can Book Ideas Feelings Felt Engaged

Author:Fred D'Aguiar

“I was on the wrong side of colonization. My ancestry is mostly mired in having the colonial experience as colonized subjects, first as slaves and then as independent subjects with a post-colonial experience.”

Firsts Sides Subjects Independent Slave Posts Ancestry Colonization

Author:Fred D'Aguiar

“My grandfather is Portuguese. He betrayed what was expected of him and married my grandmother of African descent on my father's side.”

Father Sides Married Expected Grandmother Grandfather My Grandmother Betrayed My Grandfather Descent Portuguese

Author:Fred D'Aguiar

“I try to be even-handed and fair-minded about my view of history. I don't romanticize one side and demonize the other, though I do think that if you're suffering a lot, especially in the Bob Marley sense, suffering becomes a kind of university out of which you'll learn some hard lessons.”

Ifs Thinking Trying Kind Hard Suffering Sides Views Lessons Fairs University Bob Marley Hard Lessons

Author:Fred D'Aguiar

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

Author:Fred D'Aguiar

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

People Kind Seems Type Comfortable Factories Cheesecake

Author:Fred D'Aguiar

“I want a theory to come out to guide policy.”

Want Policy Theory Guides

Author:Fred D'Aguiar

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

Thinking I Can Policy Laughter

Author:Fred D'Aguiar

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

I Can Facts Age Museums Postmodern

Author:Fred D'Aguiar

“Magical realism as a declaration in the text is usually when someone can't speak and then they must be magically reinvigorated in some way.”

Way Speak Realism Declaration Magical Realism

Author:Fred D'Aguiar

“People were always hungry, bullied, afraid, paranoid - so I just thought I'd show that in the novel in a kind of suffocating way.”

People Way Kind Shows Novel Hungry Paranoid Bullied Suffocating

Author:Fred D'Aguiar

“There's an imperative to make sure you distinguish fiction from the fact, because if the fact is doing the work, why did you do fiction? And once you raise the question of why - why do fiction? - then you have to answer it in your text as a kind of enactment of the answer.”

Ifs Kind Facts Answers Fiction Raises Imperatives

Author:Fred D'Aguiar

“If you die without agency as a child, but you have agency in your body [in the novel], how is it to be enacted unless it is being reimagined by a writer?”

Ifs Children Body Dies Novel Your Body Agency

Author:Fred D'Aguiar

“I'm interested in someone who's mired in grief: how do you get back to that thing that makes them warm? Because you know that's in there.”

Knows Grief Warm Get Back

Author:Fred D'Aguiar

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

Thinking Ends Walks Fiction Emotional Intuitive Procedures

Author:Fred D'Aguiar

“I usually feel something before I know it.”

Author:Fred D'Aguiar

“Eliot said that "genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood." What he meant by that is, the emotional understanding comes before you understand the argument that follows later in the text.”

Said Understanding Emotional Understood Argument Communicate Genuine Eliot

Author:Fred D'Aguiar

“The first hit on the nervous system is the one I'm most interested in, because I think if you hit the reader emotionally, the reader can't guarantee the lessons they would like to learn.”

Ifs Thinking Firsts Reader Lessons Nervous Guarantees Nervous System

Author:Fred D'Aguiar

“To close the empathetic gap, you really want to get the person emotionally identifying [with your subject and characters], and then when you do that, then you want sneak in a lesson about history and about politics and whatever else you might think about.”

Thinking Want Persons Character Might Subjects Lessons Gaps Sneak Identifying Empathetic Sneak In

Author:Fred D'Aguiar

“To have a young person speak back, to hand him the microphone for his first-person utterances, you'd have to have an imagined architecture, otherwise people would say you're putting words in their mouths.”

People Firsts Persons Hands Young Speak Mouths Architecture First Person Microphones Utterance Wise People

Author:Fred D'Aguiar

“If you created a place in air where they're breathing and running around in, and then they speak in that fictional milieu, it's perfectly authenticated because the whole world relies on you, who've made it possible.”

Ifs World Made Whole Running Speak Air Whole World Made It Breathing Rely Milieu

Author:Fred D'Aguiar

“People who are suffering have to visualize ways out of tragedy to actually get out of it.”

People Way Suffering Tragedy

Author:Fred D'Aguiar

“Bruce Lee, before he fought, he would try to visualize how the fight would go, because he was visualizing a victorious path out of the combat.”

Trying Fighting Path Combat Visualizing

Author:Fred D'Aguiar

“Much of the visualizing is imaginative.”

Imaginative Visualizing

Author:Fred D'Aguiar

About the Author

Born: February 2, 1960
Known for: Poet
Quotes: 31

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People Ifs Thinking Knows Men World Way Want Love Life Inspirational Needs Giving Feels Should Writing Trying Years Mind Firsts

Books & Sources

Children of ParadiseRelated source material

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