The poet complains or points out the discontent that lies at the heart of man, the individual man, and how can that… — Derek Walcott Copy Share Image
How does a poet teach himself or herself? I think chiefly by imitation, chiefly by practising it as a deliberate technical exercise… — Derek Walcott Copy Share Image
My first book of poems was published privately in 1949. That was my mother. The book was '25 Poems.' It cost 200 dollars. — Derek Walcott Copy Share Image
Creating a poem is a continual process of re-creating your ignorance, in the sense of not knowing what's coming next. — Derek Walcott Copy Share Image
Memory that yearns to join the centre, a limb remembering the body from which it has been severed, like those bamboo thighs of the… — Derek Walcott Copy Share
I don't feel I've arrived home until I get on the beach. All my life, the theater of the sea has been a very… — Derek Walcott Copy Share
“As human beings we’ve certainly suffered the loss of awe, the loss of sacredness, and the loss of the fact that we’re not here—… — Derek Walcott Copy Share
“I shall unlearn feeling, unlearn my gift. That is greater and harder than what passes there for life.” — Derek Walcott Copy Share
The greatest writers have been, at heart, parochial, provincial in their rootedness. — Derek Walcott Copy Share
The time will come when, with elation you will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror and each will smile… — Derek Walcott Copy Share
Break a vase, and the love that reassembles the fragments is stronger than that love which took its symmetry for granted when it was… — Derek Walcott Copy Share
My mother, who is nearly ninety now, still talks continually about my father. All my life, I've been aware of her grief about his… — Derek Walcott Copy Share
My family background really only consists of my mother. She was a widow. My father died quite young; he must have been thirty-one. Then… — Derek Walcott Copy Share
Like any art, what is the most imprisoning thing is also the most delivering thing. If an actor knows he only has 12 syllables… — Derek Walcott Copy Share
The history of the world - by which, of course, we mean Europe - is a record of intertribal lacerations, of ethnic cleansings. — Derek Walcott Copy Share
The English language is nobody's special property. It is the property of the imagination: it is the property of the language itself. — Derek Walcott Copy Share
