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 truest writers are those who see language not as a linguistic process but as a living element.
Interpretation
Writers should perceive language as a vibrant and organic part of life rather than just a tool for communication.
Derek Walcott's quote emphasizes that true writers possess a deep appreciation for language beyond its mechanical use. They understand it as a dynamic and expressive entity that breathes life into their work, allowing them to connect with emotions, thoughts, and experiences in a profound way.
In practice
In a writing workshop about the intricacies of creative expression.
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.
Creating a poem is a continual process of re-creating your ignorance, in the sense of not knowing what's coming next.
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.
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.
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.
The poet complains or points out the discontent that lies at the heart of man, the individual man, and how can that be redeemed?
One of the beauties of art is that it reflects an artist's entire life. What I've learned over the past 30 years is really beginning to inform what I make. I hope that process continues until I die.
To be an artist you have to give up everything, including the desire to be a good artist.
When I began making electronic music, the only thing I was thinking about was creating music that I really liked. I didn't think about what effect it would have; I was busy doing it.
Rest assured, as long as I am alive any book purporting to be with my cooperation is a falsehood.
Mournful and yet grand is the destiny of the artist.
The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different from that from which it was torn; the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.