Author: Derek Walcott

Quotes

The English language is nobody's special property. It is the property of the imagination: it is the property of the language itself.

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

I have never separated the writing of poetry from prayer. I have grown up believing it is a vocation, a religious vocation.

I have never separated the writing of poetry from prayer. I have grown up believing it is a vocation, a religious vocation.

- Derek Walcott

The Caribbean is an immense ocean that just happens to have a few islands in it. The people have an immense respect for it, awe of it.

The Caribbean is an immense ocean that just happens to have a few islands in it. The people have an immense respect for it, awe of it.

- Derek Walcott

The Caribbean is not an idyll, not to its natives. They draw their working strength from it organically, like trees, like the sea almond or the spice laurel of the heights.

The Caribbean is not an idyll, not to its natives. They draw their working strength from it organically, like trees, like the sea almond or the spice laurel of the heights.

- Derek Walcott

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

If you talk about language in the Caribbean, you must relate it to history.

If you talk about language in the Caribbean, you must relate it to history.

- Derek Walcott

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.

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

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