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" I was writing from a very, very early age. My father used to write. He died early, and my mother was a schoolteacher, so my academic background from childhood is a strong one, a good one. "
Derek Walcott
Father
Mother
Good
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" My first book of poems was published privately in 1949. That was my mother. The book was '25 Poems.' It cost 200 dollars. "
Derek Walcott
Book
Cost
First
" I made a vow that I wouldn't be tempted by what could happen to me if I went to Europe. I thought, 'You could be absorbed in it - it's so seductive, you might lose your own search for identity.' Then, when I did finally go to Europe, I was able to resist it because I had established my own identity. "
Derek Walcott
Identity
You
Thought
" A culture, we all know, is made by its cities. "
Derek Walcott
Know
Cities
Culture
" I'm read in the Caribbean with justice, with fairness. What I expect it to do is to encourage articulacy in the young. "
Derek Walcott
Fairness
Young
Read
" I have no curiosity. I'm an island boy. "
Derek Walcott
Island
Curiosity
Boy
" You can't read to yourself. It's your inner ear that hears a poem. If you hear a poet read his own work, it becomes very exciting. The melody is a great part of it. "
Derek Walcott
Work
Yourself
Poem
" 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
Brother
Father
Mother
" I don't feel like a celebrity. Poetry justifies celebrity. It's good to have respect for a poet. "
Derek Walcott
Feel
Respect
Poetry
" I'm from the island of St. Lucia in the Caribbean in the Lesser Antilles, the lower part of the archipelago, which is a bilingual island - French, Creole, and English - but my education is in English. "
Derek Walcott
Island
Education
Caribbean
" I consider the sound of the sea to be part of my body. "
Derek Walcott
Sea
Body
Consider
" The headmaster asked to read one of my poems at some celebration or other when I was about 10. When I look back, that is phenomenal encouragement. "
Derek Walcott
Encouragement
Celebration
Back
" I think, at the heart of the idea of American democracy, there is something tender. "
Derek Walcott
Heart
Idea
American
" I hate all that nonsense about not touching the colonialists' language. All that about it being corrupting and belonging to the master and making you Caliban. That thinking just denies you an outlet. You deny everything that is great from a language, whether it is Conrad or Shakespeare. "
Derek Walcott
Language
Hate
Great
" I have to live, socially, in an almost unfinished society. Among the almost great, among the almost true, among the almost honest. That allows me to describe the anguish. "
Derek Walcott
Honest
Me
Society
" You would get some fantastic syntactical phenomena. You would hear people talking in Barbados in the exact melody as a minor character in Shakespeare. Because here you have a thing that was not immured and preserved and mummified, but a voluble language, very active, very swift, very sharp. "
Derek Walcott
Active
You
People
" The thing a writer has to avoid is being the 'voice' of his people and pretending he can speak for them. "
Derek Walcott
Voice
Avoid
People
" 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
Culture
Good
Morning
" I have never felt inhibited in trying to write as well as the greatest English poets. "
Derek Walcott
Greatest
Write
Well
" There is a restless identity in the New World. The New World needs an identity without guilt or blame. "
Derek Walcott
Identity
New
Blame
" I am not in England; I live in the Caribbean. So I am not hungover by prizes and awards because it does not happen very often. "
Derek Walcott
Caribbean
Awards
Happen
" My dedication to trying to be a poet started very, very young, and I was very well encouraged by good teachers and by older friends and so on, so I think it is a benediction, and I also think it is a calling, a duty. "
Derek Walcott
Think
Dedication
Friends
" I am primarily, absolutely a Caribbean writer. "
Derek Walcott
Writer
I Am
Absolutely
" I don't feel I've arrived home until I get on the beach. All my life, the theater of the sea has been a very strong thing. "
Derek Walcott
Home
Beach
My Life
" There are some things people avoid saying in interviews because they sound pompous or sentimental or too mystical. "
Derek Walcott
Sound
People
Some
" What makes a poem is the discipline inherent in making a poem: trying to fit feelings in the requisite number of syllables and lines, disciplining one's feelings. "
Derek Walcott
Trying
Discipline
Feelings
" Poets are always making waves. I mean, you know, in an ideal situation, the ideal republic can't tolerate poets because - it isn't that they mutter and criticize; it is that the poet does not accept the situation called the 'perfect' condition of man - in other words, perfect in the materialistic sense. "
Derek Walcott
You
Perfect
Know
" In painting, you don't have to go through a process of opinion; it speaks directly, and either it works, or it doesn't. "
Derek Walcott
You
Opinion
Go
" Miscegenation is not an idea that we would have in the Caribbean. It wouldn't come up because anybody could marry anybody, you know. I'm not saying that there aren't prejudices in the Caribbean, but the idea of the word 'miscegenation' is not something that we think of. "
Derek Walcott
Saying
Think
Up
" When you're young, influences count. "
Derek Walcott
Young
You
Count
" The older I get, the more aware I am of the banality and indifference of a place like Trinidad to any development of the arts. "
Derek Walcott
Arts
Development
I Am