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
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The speaker reflects on the uniqueness of their homeland and its unrecognized culture.
Derek Walcott expresses a profound sense of ownership and connection to his native landscape and culture, highlighting that it remains largely unexplored and unsung by the outside world. He feels a deep responsibility and privilege in representing a language and a community that are not widely acknowledged, capturing the essence of his identity and artistic inspiration from a place that is rich in untold stories and beauty.
Themes
IdentityCultureCreoleLandscapeArt
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech addressing young artists, you might say, 'Like Derek Walcott, remember there are untold stories in your own background that deserve to be shared.'
More from Derek Walcott
All quotes →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
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