Jamaica Kincaid Quotes About Writing

Quotes about: Writing

• I would be lost without the feeling of antagonism that people have towards me. I write out of defiance.

  Jamaica Kincaid

  Writing, People, Feelings

• When I'm writing, I think about the garden, and when I'm in the garden I think about writing. I do a lot of writing by putting something in the ground.

  Jamaica Kincaid

  Writing, Garden, Thinking

• A professional writer is a joke. You write because you can't do anything else, and then you have another job.

  Jamaica Kincaid

  Jobs, Writing, Jokes

  "Jamaica Kincaid: Does Truth Have a Tone?". Interview with Lauren K. Alleyne, www.guernicamag.com. June 17, 2013.

• In my writing I'm trying to explore the violations people commit upon each other. And the important thing isn't whether I'm angry. The more important thing is, is it true? Do these things really happen?

  Jamaica Kincaid

  Writing, People, Important

  "Jamaica Kincaid: Does Truth Have a Tone?". Interview with Lauren K. Alleyne, www.guernicamag.com. June 17, 2013.

• I write a lot in my head. The revision goes on internally. It's not spontaneous and it doesn't have a schedule.

  Jamaica Kincaid

  Writing, Schedules, Goes On

• 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.

  Jamaica Kincaid

  Writing, Simple, Reality

• What I don't write is as important as what I write.

  Jamaica Kincaid

  Writing, Important, Crafts

• Gardening is really an extended form of reading, of history and philosophy. The garden itself has become like writing a book. I walk around and walk around. Apparently people often see me standing there and they wave to me and I don't see them because I am reading the landscape.

  Jamaica Kincaid

  Philosophy, Book, Reading

• Everything I do is because of writing. If I go for a walk, it's because I'm thinking of writing. I go look at flowers, I go look at the garden, I go look at a museum, but it's all coming back to writing.

  Jamaica Kincaid

  Flower, Writing, Garden

  "Jamaica Kincaid: Does Truth Have a Tone?". Interview with Lauren K. Alleyne, www.guernicamag.com. June 17, 2013.

• The sound of words in a novel is a pretty amazing thing, and I am concerned with the sound of every word I write.

  Jamaica Kincaid

  Writing, Sound, Novel

  "Jamaica Kincaid: Does Truth Have a Tone?". Interview with Lauren K. Alleyne, www.guernicamag.com. June 17, 2013.

• 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.

  Jamaica Kincaid

  Writing, Certain, I Can

• I write out of defiance.

  Jamaica Kincaid

  Writing, Defiance

• 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.

  Jamaica Kincaid

  Writing, Thinking, Who I Am

  "Jamaica Kincaid: Does Truth Have a Tone?". Interview with Lauren K. Alleyne, www.guernicamag.com. June 17, 2013.

• I'm always telling my students go to law school or become a doctor, do something, and then write. First of all you should have something to write about, and you only have something to write about if you do something.

  Jamaica Kincaid

  Writing, School, Doctors

  "Jamaica Kincaid: Does Truth Have a Tone?". Interview with Lauren K. Alleyne, www.guernicamag.com. June 17, 2013.

• In my writing I'm trying to explore the violations people commit upon each other.

  Jamaica Kincaid

  Writing, People, Trying

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• I'm writing out of desperation. I felt compelled to write to make sense of it to myself - so I don't end up saying peculiar things like 'I'm black and I'm proud.' I write so I don't end up as a set of slogans and clichés.

  Jamaica Kincaid

  Writing, Black, Peculiar

• Race as a subject only comes about because of what I look like. If I say something truthfully, people say "Oh, she's so angry." If I write about a married person who lives in Vermont, it becomes "Oh, she's autobiographical."

  Jamaica Kincaid

  Writing, Race, People

  "Jamaica Kincaid: Does Truth Have a Tone?". Interview with Lauren K. Alleyne, www.guernicamag.com. June 17, 2013.

• If you just sit there, and you're a writer, you're bound to write crap. A lot of American writing is crap. And a lot of American writers are professionals.

  Jamaica Kincaid

  Writing, Crap, Ifs

  "Jamaica Kincaid: Does Truth Have a Tone?". Interview with Lauren K. Alleyne, www.guernicamag.com. June 17, 2013.

• For me, writing isn't a way of being public or private; it's just a way of being. The process is always full of pain, but I like that. It's a reality, and I just accept it as something not to be avoided. This is the life I have. This is the life I write about.

  Jamaica Kincaid

  Pain, Writing, Reality

• if I'd thought that nobody would like it as I was writing it, I would have written it even more. But I never think of the audience. I never think of people reading. I never think of people, period.

  Jamaica Kincaid

  Reading, Writing, Thinking

• If I describe a person's physical appearance in my writing, which I often do, especially in fiction, I never say someone is "black" or "white." I may describe the color of their skin - black eyes, beige skin, blue eyes, dark skin, etc. But I'm not talking about race.

  Jamaica Kincaid

  Eye, Writing, Dark

  "Jamaica Kincaid: Does Truth Have a Tone?". Interview with Lauren K. Alleyne, www.guernicamag.com. June 17, 2013.

• Writing is not a profession. It's a calling. It's almost holy.

  Jamaica Kincaid

  Writing, Calling, Holy

  "Jamaica Kincaid: Does Truth Have a Tone?". Interview with Lauren K. Alleyne, www.guernicamag.com. June 17, 2013.

• 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.

  Jamaica Kincaid

  Writing, Thinking, Way

  "Jamaica Kincaid Hates Happy Endings". Interview with Marilyn Berlin Snell, www.motherjones.com. September, 1997.

• What I really want to write about is injustice and justice, and the different ways human beings organize the two.

  Jamaica Kincaid

  Writing, Two, Justice

  "Jamaica Kincaid: Does Truth Have a Tone?". Interview with Lauren K. Alleyne, www.guernicamag.com. June 17, 2013.

• So much history, if you or I were to write it, could seem a fiction. These separations, these lines that tell us this is fiction or non-fiction, that this is history or this is a novel, are often useless.

  Jamaica Kincaid

  Writing, Fiction, Useless

  "Jamaica Kincaid: Does Truth Have a Tone?". Interview with Lauren K. Alleyne, www.guernicamag.com. June 17, 2013.

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