Jamaica Kincaid Quotes - Page 3

Quotes about:

• I'm so used to being misunderstood.

  Jamaica Kincaid

  Misunderstood, Used, Being Misunderstood

  18 Copy quote

• I suppose you could say I love outlaw American culture.

  Jamaica Kincaid

  Culture, Outlaw, American Culture

  "Jamaica Kincaid on writing and 'outlaw American' culture". Interview with Nathan Rostron, www.usatoday.com. March 7, 2013.

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• I was just looking at moving to Cambridge, and a house I was looking at cost a million dollars. Because somehow, that's what a house costs. And I was thinking, "How can it be?" And I was thinking, "What am I doing? Am I going to be Niall Ferguson, that horrible man?

  Jamaica Kincaid

  Moving, Men, Thinking

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

  4 Copy quote

• In isolation I ruthlessly plow the deep silences, seeking my opportunities like a miner seeking veins of treasures. In what shallow glimmering space shall I find what glimmering glory?

  Jamaica Kincaid

  Opportunity, Space, Silence

  4 Copy quote

• Every native of every place is a potential tourist, and every tourist is a native of somewhere. Every native everywhere lives a life of overwhelming and crushing banality and boredom and desperation and depression, and every deed, good and bad, is an attempt to forget this.

  Jamaica Kincaid

  Crush, Travel, Boredom

  Jamaica Kincaid (2000). “A Small Place”, p.18, Macmillan

  9 Copy quote

• Life has a truth to it, and it's complicated - it's love and it's hatred.

  Jamaica Kincaid

  Hatred, Complicated

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

  4 Copy quote

• I've never let the criticism deter me.

  Jamaica Kincaid

  Criticism

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

  4 Copy quote

• No matter how happy I had been in the past I do not long for it. The present is always the moment for which I love.

  Jamaica Kincaid

  Past, Long, Matter

  Jamaica Kincaid (1996). “The Autobiography of My Mother: A Novel”, p.140, Macmillan

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• I'm very aware that we make these decisions toward love or hate every day. I certainly don't have the stamina to live through each day making only the noblest decisions.

  Jamaica Kincaid

  Hate, Decision, Stamina

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• Who you are is a mystery no one can answer, not even you.

  Jamaica Kincaid

  Answers, Mystery, Who You Are

  Jamaica Kincaid (1996). “The Autobiography of My Mother: A Novel”, p.138, Macmillan

  4 Copy quote

• "Race." I really can't understand it as anything other than something people say. The people who have said that you and I are both "black" and therefore deserve a certain kind of interaction with the world, they make race. I can't take them seriously.

  Jamaica Kincaid

  Race, People, Black

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

  4 Copy quote

• I wish that I could love someone so much that I would die from it.

  Jamaica Kincaid

  Wish, Love Someone, Dies

  4 Copy quote

• The thing to remember about the Declaration of Independence and the profession of freedom is that it was written by people who were quite free and who were surrounded by people who were not free. The people who wrote the Declaration of Independence were ventriloquists really. The obsession with freedom makes no sense when it applies to them.

  Jamaica Kincaid

  People, Independence, Remember

  4 Copy quote

• in the place I am from ... a grave is topped off with a huge mound of loose earth - carelessly, as if piled up in child's play, not serious at all - because death is just another way of being, and the dead will not stay put, and sometimes the actions of the dead are more significant, more profound, than their actions in life, and no structure of concrete or stone can contain them.

  Jamaica Kincaid

  Death, Children, Play

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• In a way, a garden is the most useless of creations, the most slippery of creations: it is not like a painting or a piece of sculpture-it won't accrue value as time goes on. Time is its enemy' time passing is merely the countdown for the parting between garden and gardener.

  Jamaica Kincaid

  Garden, Enemy, Sculpture

  Jamaica Kincaid (2001). “My Garden (Book)”, p.96, Macmillan

  8 Copy quote

• Like father like son, like mother like daughter!

  Jamaica Kincaid

  Daughter, Mother, Father

  Jamaica Kincaid (1997). “Annie John: A Novel”, p.102, Macmillan

  4 Copy quote

• I'm trying to earn a living in the way that is most enjoyable to me. I love the world of literature, and I hope to support myself in it.

  Jamaica Kincaid

  Support, Trying, Literature

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

  4 Copy quote

• This naming of things is so crucial to possession - a spiritual padlock with the key thrown irretrievably away - that it is a murder, an erasing, and it is not surprising that when people have felt themselves prey to it (conquest), among their first acts of liberation is to change their names.

  Jamaica Kincaid

  Spiritual, Keys, Names

  4 Copy quote

• I am not aware of anything below my neck. I live completely in my head.

  Jamaica Kincaid

  Necks

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

  4 Copy quote

• Often the lines that define the traditional European arrangement of fiction, non-fiction, history, etc. are not useful. These lines can distort the world we, people who look like me, live in - and by the world, I mean our personal experience of it.

  Jamaica Kincaid

  Mean, People, Etc

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

  4 Copy quote

• I used to want to be a backup singer. Not a lead singer, because I really can't sing.

  Jamaica Kincaid

  Want, Singers, Used

  "'Our Sassy Black Friend' Jamaica Kincaid". Interview with Hannah Levintova, www.motherjones.com. January/February 2013.

  7 Copy quote

• I can write anywhere. I actually wrote more than I ever did when I had small children. My children were never a hindrance.

  Jamaica Kincaid

  Children, Writing, Small Child

  "Jamaica Kincaid on writing and 'outlaw American' culture". Interview with Nathan Rostron, www.usatoday.com. March 7, 2013.

  4 Copy quote

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