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I'm so used to being misunderstood.

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
Misunderstood
Used

More quotes by Jamaica Kincaid

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When I start to write something, I suppose I want it to change me, to make me into something not myself.
Jamaica Kincaid
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I love planting. I love digging holes, putting plants in, tapping them in. And I love weeding, but I don't like tidying up the garden afterwards.
Jamaica Kincaid
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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.
Jamaica Kincaid
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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
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All of these declarations of what writing ought to be, which I had myself-though, thank God I had never committed them to paper-I think are nonsense. You write what you write, and then either it holds up or it doesn't hold up. There are no rules or particular sensibilities. I don't believe in that at all anymore.
Jamaica Kincaid
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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.
Jamaica Kincaid
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I wrote home to say how lovely everything was, and I used flourishing words and phrases, as if I were living life in a greeting card - the kind that has a satin ribbon on it, and quilted hearts and roses, and is expected to be so precious to the person receiving it that the manufacturer has placed a leaf of plastic on the front to protect it.
Jamaica Kincaid
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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.
Jamaica Kincaid
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Habit gives endurance, and fatigue is the best night cap.
Jamaica Kincaid
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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
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When once I got to America I fell in love with hippie culture, and I've always wanted to live in the country and grow organic vegetables.
Jamaica Kincaid
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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.
Jamaica Kincaid
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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
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It's not that I'm a very good person. It's that I think I should at least look at the ways in which I am not a good person, the ways in which I so readily become the person who would not notice that the wonderful clothing I'm wearing someone is probably dying for.
Jamaica Kincaid
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What I really want to write about is injustice and justice, and the different ways human beings organize the two.
Jamaica Kincaid
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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
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I loved Charlotte Bronte when I was little, and I wanted to be Charlotte Bronte the way people want to be a princess.
Jamaica Kincaid
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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.
Jamaica Kincaid
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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
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A piece of cloth that is called linen has more validity than calling you and me black or negro. Cotton has more validity as cotton than yours and my being black.
Jamaica Kincaid