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I'm just a red nigger who love the sea,
I had a sound colonial education,
I have Dutch, nigger, and English in me,
and either I'm nobody, or I'm a nation.

— Derek Walcott The Schooner Flight (1980)

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More quotes by Derek Walcott

Break a vase, and the love that reassembles the fragments is stronger than that love which took its symmetry for granted when it was whole.

I try to forget what happiness was,
and when that don't work, I study the stars.

The Schooner Flight (1980)

Good science and good art are always about a condition of awe … I don’t think there is any other function for the poet or the scientist in the human tribe but the astonishment of the soul.

The violence of beast on beast is read
As natural law, but upright man
Seeks his divinity by inflicting pain.

A Far Cry from Africa (1962)

Peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Collected Poems, 1948-1984 (1986)

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Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind,
And therefore is wing'd Cupid painted blind.

William Shakespeare A Midsummer Night's Dream (1595)

To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.

Bertrand Russell Marriage and Morals (1929)

Not for the body, but for the heart; companion and company are needed.

Sanu Sharma

Love seldom haunts the breast where learning lies,
And Venus sets ere Mercury can rise.

Alexander Pope

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Derek Walcott (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.