To change your language you must change your life. Derek Walcott More Quotes by Derek Walcott More Quotes From Derek Walcott You can't write drunk. Derek Walcott drunkwriting We read, we travel, we become. Derek Walcott In Eden who sleeps happiest? The serpent. Derek Walcott edenevilsleep She's a rare vase, out of a cat's reach, on its shelf. Derek Walcott vasesshelvescat The classics can console. But not enough. Derek Walcott consoleenough I too saw the wooden horse blocking the stars. Derek Walcott horseblockstars I know when dark-haired evening put on her bright silk at sunset, and, folding the sea sidled under the sheet with her starry laugh, that there'd be no rest, there'd be no forgetting. Is like telling mourners round the graveside about resurrection, they want the dead back. Derek Walcott sunsetseadark Who cares about a kid from the Midwest writing pentameter? It's stupid. Derek Walcott stupidwritingkids When poems are no good they don't make any sense. Derek Walcott The first thing we have to do is get rid of the pentameter. To ditch the pentameter. Derek Walcott firsts All of Victorian verse is pentameter. Derek Walcott victorianverses The truth is that the poems are ecstatic. Derek Walcott ecstatictruth-is I consider the sound of the sea to be part of my body. Derek Walcott partbodyseasound All of the Antilles, every island, is an effort of memory: every mind, every racial biography culminating in amnesia and fog. Pieces of sunlight through the fog and sudden rainbows, arcs-en-ciel. That is the effort, the labour of the Antillean imagination, rebuilding its gods from bamboo frames, phrase by phrase. Derek Walcott memoryeffortimaginationmind There is a force of exultation, a celebration of luck, when a writer finds himself a witness to the early morning of a culture that is defining itself, branch by branch, leaf by leaf, in that self-defining dawn, which is why, especially at the edge of the sea, it is good to make a ritual of the sunrise. Derek Walcott goodseamorningculture A noun is not a name you give something. It is something you watch becoming itself, and you have to have the patience to find out what it is. Derek Walcott namefindyoupatience Modesty is not possible in performance in the Caribbean - and that's wonderful. Derek Walcott possibleperformancewonderful Rhyme is an attempt to reassemble and reaffirm the possibility of paradise. There is a wholeness, a serenity, in sounds coupling to form a memory. Derek Walcott memoryrhymeserenityparadise 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 there was my twin brother and my sister. We had two aunts as well, my father's sisters. But the immediate family consisted of my mother, my brother, my sister, and me. Derek Walcott mefamilymotherfather What was moving, I think, was the fact that the statue is a woman and not a heroic, manly figure. So for all her scale and immensity, there's something soft about the Statue of Liberty, something tender about her. Derek Walcott womanthinklibertymoving
