Jamaica Kincaid Quotes - Page 5

The thing about writing in America is that writers in America have an arc. You enter writing as a career, you expect to be successful, and really it's the wrong thing. It's not a profession.

It is true that our skin is sort of more or less the same shade. But is it true that our skin color makes us a distinctive race? No.

A psychiatrist once asked me to draw a picture of my family. This is when I was a member of a family of four. I drew the three other people in the family first, bodies and heads. And then, last, I began to draw myself - but gave up.

I don't really do anything that isn't about writing, and I don't really know who I am if I'm not thinking about writing.

The past is a room full of baggage and rubbish and sometimes things that are of use, but if they are of real use, I have kept them.

He must have smiled at me, though I don't really know, but I don't like to think that I would love someone who hadn't first smiled at me.

An ugly thing, that is what you are when you become a tourist, an ugly, empty thing, a stupid thing, a piece of rubbish pausing here and there to gaze at this and taste that, and it will never occur to you that the people who inhabit the place in which you have just paused cannot stand you.

I write out of defiance.

But no longer could I aks God what to do, since the answer, I was sure, would not suit me. I could do what suited me know, as long as I could pay for it. 'As long as I could pay for it.' That phrase soon became the tail that wagged my dog. If I had died then, it should have been my epigraph.

That the world I was in could be soft, lovely, and nourishing was more than I could bear, and so I stood there and wept, for I didn't want to love one more thing in my life, didn't want one more thing that could make my heart break into a million little pieces at my feet.

That is how I came to think that heavy and hard was the beginning of living, real living; and though I might not end up with a mark on my cheek, I had no doubt that I would end up with a mark somewhere.

I can't get upset about 'offensive to women' or 'offensive to blacks' or 'offensive to Native Americans' or 'offensive to Jews' ... Offend! I can't get worked up about it. Offend!

It was hollow, my triumph, I could feel that, but I held on to it just the same.

My disappointments stand up and grow ever taller. They will not be lost to me.

There's a difference between bravery and rash stupidity.

A tourist is an ugly human being.

It is true that I am a writer, and I was married to a composer, and I have lived in a small village in New England, but my children are not named Heracles and Persephone, and my daughter doesn't disappear underground every six months and emerge in the spring.

Gardeners (or just plain simple writers who write about the garden) always have something they like intensely and in particular, right at the moment you engage them in the reality of the borders they cultivate, the space in the garden they occupy at any moment, they like in particular this, or they like in particular that.

When I write a book, I hope to be beyond mortal by the time I'm finished.

Of course, every time I end a book, I look down at myself and I'm just the same. I'm always disappointed that I'm just the same, but not enough to never do it again!

When I start to write something, I suppose I want it to change me, to make me into something not myself.

The families of rabbits or woodchucks will eat the salad greens just before they are ready to be picked; I plot ways to kill these animals but can never bring myself to do it.

I read about writers who have routines. They write at certain times of the day. I can't do that. I am always writing-but in my head.

It is sad that unless you are born a god, your life,from its very beginning, is a mystery to you.

I think in many ways the problem that my writing would have with an American reviewer is that Americans find difficulty very hard to take. They are inevitably looking for a happy ending.