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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.

— Derek Walcott

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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)

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)

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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.