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 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 soulartthinking 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 fatefalling-in-lovemorning 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 winemirrorsheart The future happens. No matter how much we scream. Derek Walcott screammatterhappens Summer for prose and lemons, for nakedness and languor. Derek Walcott lemonsprosesummer 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 languageimaginationspecial 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 mirrorsdoorsinspiring 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-piecesstrong-lovestronger 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 landscaperuinssugar If you know what you are going to write when you're writing a poem, it's going to be average. Derek Walcott poetrywritingaverage 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 gesturesstylelikes Visual surprise is natural in the Caribbean; it comes with the landscape, and faced with its beauty, the sigh of History dissolves. Derek Walcott landscapesurprisebeauty I read; I travel; I become Derek Walcott inspiretravel I have never separated the writing of poetry from prayer. I have grown up believing it is a vocation, a religious vocation. Derek Walcott religiousprayerbelieve Time is the metre, memory the only plot. Derek Walcott plottimememories Peel your own image from the mirror. Sit. Feast on your life. Derek Walcott passionmirrors 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 mirrorsreallooks A culture, we all know, is made by its cities. Derek Walcott citiesmadeculture The mirror is believed the way a poem is believed. It's believed because it's there. Derek Walcott mirrorsway
