QuoteProject
I go back to St. Lucia, and the exhilaration I feel is not simply the exhilaration of homecoming and of nostalgia. It is almost an irritation of feeling: 'Well, you never got it right. Now you have another chance. Maybe you can try and look harder.'
Derek Walcott
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

Returning to familiar places can evoke deep emotions and a desire for self-improvement.

Derek Walcott reflects on the complex feelings tied to returning to St. Lucia, emphasizing that such homecomings bring not only nostalgia but also a sense of personal accountability. The experience provokes an urge to confront past shortcomings and to seek a better understanding and appreciation of one’s roots and experiences.

Themes

NostalgiaHomecomingSelf-ImprovementReflectionGrowth

In practice

Example use cases

During a speech about personal growth, one could mention this quote to emphasize the importance of learning from past experiences.

More from Derek Walcott

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 WalcottRead
Creating a poem is a continual process of re-creating your ignorance, in the sense of not knowing what's coming next.
Derek WalcottRead
A long time ago, I thought, as a writer in the Caribbean, 'I don't ever want to have to write 'It was great in Paris.'' Because I don't think, proportionately speaking, that one's experience in a city as opposed to, say, a village in St. Lucia, is superior to the other.
Derek WalcottRead
My mother was a schoolteacher and very, very encouraging. She understood what it meant when I said I wanted to be a writer; both me and my brother wrote.
Derek WalcottRead
When I went to college - when I read Shakespeare or Dickens or Scott - I just felt that, as a citizen of England, a British citizen, this was as much my heritage as any schoolboy's. That is one of the things the Empire taught, that apart from citizenship, the synonymous inheritance of the citizenship was the literature.
Derek WalcottRead
The truest writers are those who see language not as a linguistic process but as a living element.
Derek WalcottRead

Similar quotes

I'm drawn to write about upstate New York in the way in which a dreamer might have recurring dreams. My childhood and girlhood were spent in upstate New York, in the country north of Buffalo and West of Rochester. So this part of New York state is very familiar to me and, with its economic difficulties, has become emblematic of much of American life.
Joyce Carol OatesRead
If I had my life to live over again, I would ask that not a thing be changed, but that my eyes be opened wider.
Jules RenardRead
When a person has lived generously and fought fiercely, she deserves more than sadness at the end.
Ruth ReichlRead
Survivorship comes with unspoken pressures, responsibilities and challenges. After all, what is the point of saving a life if the life isn't a meaningful one?
Suleika JaouadRead
Kids are great. That's one of the best things about our business, all the kids you get to meet. It's a shame they have to grow up to be regular people and come to the games and call you names.
Charles BarkleyRead
Every great loss demands that we choose life again. We need to grieve in order to do this. The pain we have not grieved over will always stand between us and life. When we don't grieve, a part of us becomes caught in the past like Lot's wife who, because she looked back, was turned into a pillar of salt.
Rachel Naomi RemenRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.