Derek Walcott

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

“The poet complains or points out the discontent that lies at the heart of man, the individual man, and how can that be redeemed?”

“I always knew that was what I wanted to do - to write, particularly poetry.”

“My first book of poems was published privately in 1949. That was my mother. The book was '25 Poems.' It cost 200 dollars.”

“Modesty is not possible in performance in the Caribbean - and that's wonderful.”

“My generation produced some terrific writers from all over, and the great thing about it is that they were all mixed in race.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Like any art, what is the most imprisoning thing is also the most delivering thing. If an actor knows he only has 12 syllables in a line, the challenge is, 'How can I interpret the meaning and contain it without going one syllable over?'”

“The thing a writer has to avoid is being the 'voice' of his people and pretending he can speak for them.”

“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.”

“I consider the sound of the sea to be part of my body.”

“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.”

“I'm read in the Caribbean with justice, with fairness. What I expect it to do is to encourage articulacy in the young.”

“There are some things people avoid saying in interviews because they sound pompous or sentimental or too mystical.”

“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.”

“Musical composition, about which I know little, is a complicated art, and some contemporary music may be the equivalent of a complex abstract painting.”

“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.”

“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.”