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

— 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.

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)

Any serious attempt to try to do something worthwhile is ritualistic.

for The Paris Review (1986)

All Derek Walcott quotes →

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.