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One of the things reading does, it makes your loneliness manageable if you are an essentially lonely person.

Jamaica Kincaid

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Jamaica Kincaid
Age: 75
Born: 1949
Born: May 25
Novelist
Playwright
University Teacher
Writer
St John's
Elanie Potter Richardson
Elaine Cynthia Potter Richardson
Doe
Persons
Person
Manageable
Things
Essentially
Loneliness
Lonely
Reading
Makes

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Express everything you like. No word can hurt you. None. No idea can hurt you. Not being able to express an idea or word will hurt you more. Like a bullet.
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I was then at the height of my two-facedness: that is, outside I seemed one way, inside I was another outside false, inside true.
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the first step in claiming yourself is anger. You get mad. And you can't do anything before you get angry. And I recommend getting very angry to everyone, anyone.
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On their way to freedom, some people find riches, some people find death.
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Someone who knew me well once accused me of being unromantic. And that's probably true: I don't trust romance.
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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.
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I've come to see that I'm saying something that people generally do not want to hear.
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The space between the idea of something and its reality is always wide and deep and dark. The longer they are kept apart—idea of thing, reality of thing—the wider the width, the deeper the depth, the thicker and darker the darkness.
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The photograph of my brother that is in this album shows a young man, beautiful and perfect in the way of young people, for young people are always perfect and beautiful until they are not, until the moment they just are not.
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Children like their mothers especially to be standing still and watching them, even if they are sleeping. At least that's how I felt. There's nothing wrong with the self-interest of children it's just the way they are.
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I would pretend when I was a child that I was Charlotte Brontë, because I'd read Jane Eyre when I was ten and, although I didn't understand it, I loved the idea that this woman had written a book. I wanted to be her.
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It is sad that unless you are born a god, your life,from its very beginning, is a mystery to you.
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If I actually ran the world, I'd do it from the kitchen. It's not anything deliberate or a statement or anything, that's just how I understand things. It's arranged along informal lines.
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The thing we call romance is a diversion from something truer, which is life.
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My disappointments stand up and grow ever taller. They will not be lost to me.
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I like melancholy. I like to pretend that I'm alone in the world and I'm just sort of abandoned.
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Here I am, a product of something really vicious, product of the Atlantic slave trade. And yet, I give nary a thought to some of the awful things happening right now in the world.
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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.
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I write a lot in my head. The revision goes on internally. It's not spontaneous and it doesn't have a schedule.
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There's a difference between bravery and rash stupidity.
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