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Famous Derek Walcott Quotes
“The voice does go up in a poem. It is an address, even if it is to oneself.”
“How can I turn from Africa and live?”
“Damn wind shift sudden as a woman mind.”
“The mirror is believed the way a poem is believed. It's believed because it's there.”
“I look in the mirror. There's me. What's in the mirror is not real. So am I unreal?”
“The first thing we have to do is get rid of the pentameter. To ditch the pentameter.”
“Who cares about a kid from the Midwest writing pentameter? It's stupid.”
“When you get a class reciting some great poems, it'll tear your heart out.”
“The truest writers are those who see language not as a linguistic process but as a living element.”
“Time is the metre, memory the only plot.”
“If you know what you are going to write when you're writing a poem, it's going to be average.”
“Peel your own image from the mirror. Sit. Feast on your life.”
“Any serious attempt to try to do something worthwhile is ritualistic.”
“The classics can console. But not enough.”
“A culture, we all know, is made by its cities.”
“We make too much of that long groan which underlines the past.”