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" 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
Respect
Awe
Caribbean
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" There's a ritualistic element to tragedy that everyone shares; there's something curiously glorious in terms of the most horrible kind of events that happen. "
Derek Walcott
Everyone
Tragedy
Kind
" 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
Liberty
Woman
Her
" That's another pompous expression that is out of fashion, to say that poetry is a gift. It sounds pompous because you say, 'Who gave you the gift, and what is this gift?' And the gift is where I am; the gift is what I have come out of, the people around me who, I think, are beautiful people. "
Derek Walcott
Beautiful
People
Poetry
" 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
" 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
" If you know what you are going to write when you're writing a poem, it's going to be average. "
Derek Walcott
Average
You
Writing
" The number of people who read a poem is not as important as how the poem affects those who read it. "
Derek Walcott
Who
Important
Number
" My delight in things is definitely Caribbean. It has to do with landscape and food. The fact that my language may have a metrical direction is because that's the shape of the language. I didn't make that shape. "
Derek Walcott
Landscape
Language
Direction
" 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
You
Watch
Patience
" When a child's mind develops and is heading in a certain direction, we murder that mentality, we murder that imagination, by saying, 'Now, that is all well and good, but now sit down and start to study.' "
Derek Walcott
Imagination
Saying
Good
" 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
" The country that I was coming from, the island I was in, hadn't been written about, really. So I thought that I virtually had it all to myself, including the language that was spoken there, which was a French Creole, and a landscape that is not recorded, really, and the people. "
Derek Walcott
Myself
Language
Been
" A fisherman, say, working on a beach doing his job, may be photographed by a tourist because it's photogenic to see him working, and the Caribbean is extremely photogenic, so poverty is photogenic, and a lot of people are photographed in their poverty, and sometimes it's kind of exploited. "
Derek Walcott
Poverty
Say
Beach
" There's always a need at a critical time for poetry. "
Derek Walcott
Poetry
Time
Always
" I didn't pass the scholarship exam for Oxford because of poor mathematics. "
Derek Walcott
Poor
Scholarship
Mathematics
" My mother, who is nearly ninety now, still talks continually about my father. All my life, I've been aware of her grief about his absence and her strong pride in his conduct. "
Derek Walcott
Now
Mother
Grief
" My mother hid the struggle from us children. She complained about her salary, and she had a tough time. Although she became a headmistress, she still had to do a lot of sewing. The more I think about her, the more remarkable I realise she was. And she understood straight away when I said that I wanted to write. "
Derek Walcott
Think
Struggle
Mother
" I can be upset by malice. Most critics are very poor poets. Poetry is a craft that takes a lot to appreciate, and there are some critics who have no ear for it. An irresponsible critic can do a lot of psychic damage, but eventually, they don't affect your work. "
Derek Walcott
Upset
I Can
Appreciate
" I feel blessed that I was gifted. "
Derek Walcott
Gifted
Blessed
Feel
" 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
" After a while, when the writer is mature, it doesn't really matter - not because of finances but because of reputation. It doesn't really matter how many awards you get. "
Derek Walcott
You
Reputation
Mature
" 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
" I am not defined as a black writer in the Caribbean, but as soon as I go to America or the U.K., my place becomes black theatre. It's a little ridiculous. "
Derek Walcott
Place
Theatre
Go
" I don't think poetry has a readership anywhere, really, that's that big. "
Derek Walcott
Really
Poetry
Think
" I don't want to write poems about the royal wedding. I would have to be moved by the event. "
Derek Walcott
Write
Event
Royal
" A culture, we all know, is made by its cities. "
Derek Walcott
Know
Cities
Culture
" Visual surprise is natural in the Caribbean; it comes with the landscape, and faced with its beauty, the sigh of History dissolves. "
Derek Walcott
Surprise
Beauty
History
" 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
" 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
" My relationship to Britain is of no consequence. "
Derek Walcott
Relationship
Consequence
Britain