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.

Quote by Derek Walcott

Topics: Derek Walcott Quotes

This is Port of Spain to me, a city ideal in its commercial and human...

This is Port of Spain to me, a city ideal in its commercial and human...

Memory that yearns to join the centre, a limb remembering the body from which it...

Memory that yearns to join the centre, a limb remembering the body from which it...

If you know what you are going to write when you're writing a poem, it's...

If you know what you are going to write when you're writing a poem, it's...

A culture, we all know, is made by its cities.

A culture, we all know, is made by its cities.

The personal vocabulary, the individual melody whose metre is one's biography, joins in that sound,...

The personal vocabulary, the individual melody whose metre is one's biography, joins in that sound,...

Any serious attempt to try to do something worthwhile is ritualistic.

Any serious attempt to try to do something worthwhile is ritualistic.

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

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

We make too much of that long groan which underlines the past.

We make too much of that long groan which underlines the past.

Visual surprise is natural in the Caribbean; it comes with the landscape, and faced with...

Visual surprise is natural in the Caribbean; it comes with the landscape, and faced with...

Break a vase, and the love that reassembles the fragments is stronger than that love...

Break a vase, and the love that reassembles the fragments is stronger than that love...

Because that is what such a city is, in the New World, a writer's heaven.

Because that is what such a city is, in the New World, a writer's heaven.

If you know what you are going to write when you're writing a poem, it's...

If you know what you are going to write when you're writing a poem, it's...

All that I really have to recount are observations and notes made during the course...

All that I really have to recount are observations and notes made during the course...

What a lot we lost when we stopped writing letters. You can't reread a phone...

What a lot we lost when we stopped writing letters. You can't reread a phone...

Writing a book is a very lonely business. You are totally cut off from the...

Writing a book is a very lonely business. You are totally cut off from the...

When I write, I aim in my mind not toward New York but toward a...

When I write, I aim in my mind not toward New York but toward a...

Before I write I let my mind go blind and let the lord do his...

Before I write I let my mind go blind and let the lord do his...

Today's public figures can no longer write their own speeches or books, and there is...

Today's public figures can no longer write their own speeches or books, and there is...

The difficulty of literature is not to write, but to write what you mean; not...

The difficulty of literature is not to write, but to write what you mean; not...

Writing a story or a novel is one way of discovering sequence in experience, of...

Writing a story or a novel is one way of discovering sequence in experience, of...