Modesty is not possible in performance in the Caribbean - and that's wonderful. Derek Walcott More Quotes by Derek Walcott More Quotes From Derek Walcott Good science and good art are always about a condition of awe. I don't think there is any other function for the poet or the scientist in the human tribe but the astonishment of the soul. Derek Walcott soul art thinking For every poet it is always morning in the world; history a forgotten, insomniac night. The fate of poetry is to fall in love with the world in spite of history. Derek Walcott fate falling-in-love morning Love After Love The time will come when, with elation you will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror and each will smile at the other's welcome, and say, sit here. Eat. You will love again the stranger who was your self. Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart to itself, to the stranger who has loved you all your life, whom you 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 wine mirrors heart The future happens. No matter how much we scream. Derek Walcott scream matter happens Summer for prose and lemons, for nakedness and languor. Derek Walcott lemons prose summer 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 language imagination special The time will come when, with elation, you will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror, and each will smile at the other’s welcome. Derek Walcott mirrors doors inspiring Break a vase, and the love that reassembles the fragments is stronger than that love which took its symmetry for granted when it was whole. Derek Walcott broken-pieces strong-love stronger The sigh of History rises over ruins, not over landscapes, and in the Antilles there are few ruins to sigh over, apart from the ruins of sugar estates and abandoned forts. Derek Walcott landscape ruins sugar If you know what you are going to write when you're writing a poem, it's going to be average. Derek Walcott poetry writing average I come from a place that likes grandeur; it likes large gestures; it is not inhibited by flourish; it is a rhetorical society; it is a society of physical performance; it is a society of style. Derek Walcott gestures style likes Visual surprise is natural in the Caribbean; it comes with the landscape, and faced with its beauty, the sigh of History dissolves. Derek Walcott landscape surprise beauty I read; I travel; I become Derek Walcott inspire travel I have never separated the writing of poetry from prayer. I have grown up believing it is a vocation, a religious vocation. Derek Walcott religious prayer believe Time is the metre, memory the only plot. Derek Walcott plot time memories Peel your own image from the mirror. Sit. Feast on your life. Derek Walcott passion mirrors There's always more to see. Derek Walcott I look in the mirror. There's me. What's in the mirror is not real. So am I unreal? Derek Walcott mirrors real looks A culture, we all know, is made by its cities. Derek Walcott cities made culture The mirror is believed the way a poem is believed. It's believed because it's there. Derek Walcott mirrors way
