173 Quotes by Derek Walcott

The future happens. No matter how much we scream.

Who with the Devil tries to play fair,weaves the net of his own despair.Oh, smile; what’s a house between drunkards?

I do not live in you, I bearmy house inside me, everywhereuntil your winters grow more kindby the dancing firelight of mindwhere knobs of brass do not existwhose doors dissolve in tendernessHouse that lets in, at last, those fearsthat are its guests, to sit on chairsfeasts on their human faces, andtakes pity simply by the handshows her her room, and feels the humof wood and brick becoming home.

Who is the man who can speak to the strong?Where is the fool who can talk to the wise?Men who are dead now have learnt this long,Bitter is wisdom that fails when it tries.

You want to hear my history? Ask the sea.

What are men? Children who doubt.

These are the days when, however simple the future, we do not gotowards it but leave part of life in a lobby whose elevatorsdivide and enclose us, brightening digits that showexactly where we are headed, while a young Polish womanis emptying an ashtray, and we are drawn to a windowwhose strings, if we pull them, widen an emptiness.

As human beings we’ve certainly suffered the loss of awe, the loss of sacredness, and the loss of the fact that we’re not here— we’re not put on earth— to shape it anyway we want... You want something to happen with poetry, but it doesn’t make anything happen. So then somebody says, “What’s the use of poetry?” Then you say, “Well, what’s the use of a cloud? What’s the use of a river? What’s the use of a tree?” They don’t make anything happen.

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