your face like a village asleep at the bottom of a lake…

It is no use painting the foot of the tree white, the strength of the bark cries out from beneath the paint.

— Aime Cesaire

There's room for everyone at the rendezvous of victory.

— Aime Cesaire

Africa, help me to go home, carry me like an aged child in your arms. Undress me and wash me. Strip me of all…

— Aime Cesaire

“the thick stream of air hauled toward the summits first the great horses of noise reared against the sky then sluggishly the great limp…

— Aimé Césaire

Poetic knowledge is born in the great silence of scientific knowledge.

— Aime Cesaire

I would rediscover the secret of great communications and great combustions. I would say storm. I would say river. I would say tornado. I…

— Aime Cesaire

“like the scorpion's question mark drawn in the pollen on the canvas of the sky and of our brains at midnight”

— Aimé Césaire

“the forest remembers that the last word can only be the flaming cry of the bird of ruins in the bowl of the storm”

— Aimé Césaire

“and no race has a monopoly on beauty, on intelligence, on strength”

— Aimé Césaire

When I turn on my radio, when I hear that Negroes have been lynched in America, I say that we have been lied to:…

— Aime Cesaire

Beware, my body and my soul, beware above all of crossing your arms and assuming the sterile attitude of the spectator, for life is…

— Aime Cesaire

“In light of recent events—genocide in East Africa, the collapse of democracy throughout the continent, the isolation of Cuba, the overthrow of progressive movements…

— Aimé Césaire

“What am I driving at? At this idea: that no one colonizes innocently, that no one colonizes with impunity either; that a nation which…

— Aimé Césaire

In the whole world no poor devil is lynched, no wretch is tortured, in whom I too am not degraded and murdered.

— Aime Cesaire

Out of the sky, the birds, the parrots, the bells, silk, cloth, and drums, out of Sundays dancing, children's words and love words, out…

— Aime Cesaire