Jamaica Kincaid Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• 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.

  8 Copy quote

• when people say you're charming you are in deep trouble.

  Jamaica Kincaid

  People, Trouble, Charming

  6 Copy quote

• I didn't think of myself as an outsider because of my race because... where I grew up I was the same race as almost everyone else... It is true that I noticed things that no one else seemed to notice. And I think only people who are outsiders do this.

  Jamaica Kincaid

  Thinking, Race, People

  5 Copy quote

• The people who invented race, who grouped us together as "black," were inventing and categorizing their ability to do something vicious and wrong.

  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

• America is not so much a country as it is an idea, and that must be why so many people are drawn to it, the idea of it, the idea that you might be free of your past, free of the traditions that kept you in your own traditions - that is the idea of it: freedom from your very own self.

  Jamaica Kincaid

  Country, Past, Self

  16 Copy quote

• Tomorrow exists even though I may not exist in it.

  Jamaica Kincaid

  May, Tomorrow

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  14 Copy quote

• 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.

  12 Copy quote

• 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.

  13 Copy quote

• Had the Holocaust happened in Tahiti or the Congo, as it has; had it happened in South America, as it has; had it happened in the West Indies, as it has - you must remember that within fifty years of Columbus's arrival, only the bones remained of the people called the Arawaks, with one or two of them in Spain as specimens. Had the Holocaust committed under the Nazis happened somewhere else, we wouldn't be talking about it the way we talk about it.

  Jamaica Kincaid

  West Indies, Talking, Years

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

  13 Copy quote

• Friendship is a simple thing, and yet complicated; friendship is on the surface, something natural, something taken for granted, and yet underneath one could find worlds.

  Jamaica Kincaid

  Taken, Simple, World

  6 Copy quote

• One doesn't have to pursue unhappiness. It comes to you. You come into the world screaming. You cry when you're born because your lungs expand. You breathe. I think that's really kind of significant. You come into the world crying, and it's a sign that you're alive.

  Jamaica Kincaid

  Thinking, Alive, World

  5 Copy quote

• I like to be depressing. I feel it's my duty to make everyone a little less happy. You know that line in the Declaration of Independence, "the pursuit of happiness"? I've come to think that it has no meaning at all. You cannot pursue happiness. And to think that this bad little sentence has determined our lives.

  Jamaica Kincaid

  Depressing, Pursuit Of Happiness, Thinking

  4 Copy quote

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

  Jamaica Kincaid

  Writing, Important, Crafts

  7 Copy quote

• I think a woman is powerless if she cannot freely claim the right to her reproductive capacity. Society can talk about anything it likes, except a woman's reproductive existence.

  Jamaica Kincaid

  Thinking, Likes, Claims

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

  8 Copy quote

• The garden has taught me to live, to appreciate the times when things are fallow and when they're not.

  Jamaica Kincaid

  Garden, Appreciate, Taught

  6 Copy quote

• One's obligation every day, is to choose to follow the nobler one.

  Jamaica Kincaid

  Obligation

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• At the time I was taught to read, it was an Eden-like time of my life. My mother adored me. Everyone adored me. So I associate reading with enormous pleasure.

  Jamaica Kincaid

  Mother, Reading, Eden

  10 Copy quote

• 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

  5 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

• On their way to freedom, some people find riches, some people find death.

  Jamaica Kincaid

  People, Riches, Way

  Jamaica Kincaid (2002). “Lucy: A Novel”, p.129, Macmillan

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• 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 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

• 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

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