
Yesterday's Songs
Song lyrics, On the Way to the Sky (1981)
Source: The BFG
Yesterday's Songs
Song lyrics, On the Way to the Sky (1981)
“When I was growing up, everyone around me was fond of fooling around with words.”
Salon interview (1996)
Context: When I was growing up, everyone around me was fond of fooling around with words. It was certainly common in my family, but I think it is typical of Bombay, and maybe of India, that there is a sense of play in the way people use language. Most people in India are multilingual, and if you listen to the urban speech patterns there you'll find it's quite characteristic that a sentence will begin in one language, go through a second language and end in a third. It's the very playful, very natural result of juggling languages. You are always reaching for the most appropriate phrase.
“"The words still don't move."
"The words don't need to move. It is you who is moved by them."”
Source: River of Gods (2006), Ch. 19 (p. 239).
On the realization that he was a poet in “Interview with Benjamin Zephaniah” https://www.writersandartists.co.uk/writers/advice/37/a-writers-toolkit/interviews-with-authors/interview-with-benjamin-zephaniah in Writers & Artists
“Listen to the words long written down,
When the man comes around.”
Song lyrics, American IV: The Man Comes Around (2002), The Man Comes Around
Context: Whoever is unjust, let him be unjust still.
Whoever is righteous, let him be righteous still.
Whoever is filthy, let him be filthy still.
Listen to the words long written down,
When the man comes around.
Source: I'll Ask You Three Times, Are You OK?: Tales of Driving and Being Driven