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
Individual writers have different postures, different stances, even different physical attitudes as they stand or sit over their blank paper, and in a sense, without doing it, they are crossing themselves; I mean, it's like the habit of Catholics going into water: you cross yourself before you go in.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Writers approach their craft with unique mindsets and rituals that prepare them for the creative process.
Derek Walcott highlights that every writer has their own unique way of engaging with their craft, which includes not just their physical posture, but also a mental and spiritual readiness. This 'crossing themselves' metaphor suggests that writers possess certain habits or rituals that signify their commitment to the creative process, similar to how a Catholic might make the sign of the cross before entering water, marking a transition into a sacred or significant space.
Themes
WritingRitualsCreativityCommitmentPosture
In practice
Example use cases
In a workshop on creative writing, a facilitator might say this quote to emphasize the importance of personal rituals in writing.
More from Derek Walcott
All quotes →Creating a poem is a continual process of re-creating your ignorance, in the sense of not knowing what's coming next.
Derek WalcottRead
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.
Derek WalcottRead
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.
Derek WalcottRead
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.
Derek WalcottRead
The truest writers are those who see language not as a linguistic process but as a living element.
Derek WalcottRead
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I am now satisfied that the future music of this country must be founded upon what are called negro melodies. This must be the real foundation of any serious and original school of composition to be developed in the United States.
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