How can I turn from Africa and live? Derek Walcott More Quotes by Derek Walcott More Quotes From Derek Walcott Love After Love all your life, whom you have ignored for another, who knows you by heart. Take down the love letters from the bookshelf, the photographs, the desperate notes, peel your own image from the mirror. Sit. Feast on your life. Derek Walcott mirrorslettersheart When you get a class reciting some great poems, it'll tear your heart out. Derek Walcott tearsheartclass What are men? Children who doubt. Derek Walcott doubtmenchildren The truest writers are those who see language not as a linguistic process but as a living element. Derek Walcott black-historyelementslanguage The word and the shadow of the word / makes a thing both itself and something else / till we are metaphors and not ourselves . . . Derek Walcott metaphorshadow I try to forget what happiness was, and when that don't work, I study the stars. Derek Walcott studystarstrying The thing that is believed is a reality. Derek Walcott reality The English language is nobody's special property. Derek Walcott english-languagelanguagespecial We make too much of that long groan which underlines the past. Derek Walcott too-muchlongpast Damn wind shift sudden as a woman mind. Derek Walcott damnmindwind Slowly my body grows a single sound, slowly I become a bell, an oval, disembodied vowel, I grow, an owl, an aureole, white fire poesia "Metamorfosi, I. Luna Derek Walcott firewhiteowl The poem is itself a mirror. Derek Walcott mirrors The personal vocabulary, the individual melody whose metre is one's biography, joins in that sound, with any luck, and the body moves like a walking, a waking island. Derek Walcott vocabularyislandsmoving Art is History's nostalgia, it prefers a thatched roof to a concrete factory, and the huge church above a bleached village. Derek Walcott villagechurchart The voice does go up in a poem. It is an address, even if it is to oneself. Derek Walcott addressesvoicedoe To change your language you must change your life. Derek Walcott changing-your-lifelanguagelife We look and see what we see in a mirror, and we believe it. That's important, the question of belief. The question is: Should we believe what we see in a mirror? Derek Walcott importantmirrorsbelieve Any serious attempt to try to do something worthwhile is ritualistic. Derek Walcott worthwhileserioustrying Memory that yearns to join the centre, a limb remembering the body from which it has been severed, like those bamboo thighs of the god. Derek Walcott bamboobodymemories Americans are not brought up with meter. They're not brought up with poetry. If you try to get them to recite, they're too embarrassed. Derek Walcott meterembarrassedtrying
