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I didn't really understand racism because I grew up in an all-black society, so I didn't see how it was possible not to like me!

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
Understand
Black
Didn
Really
Like
Racism
Grew
Possible
Society

More quotes by 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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I know that the fantastic amount of profit that people want to make on anything is damaging. And that none of us seem able to resist it.
Jamaica Kincaid
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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
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It's very funny, American society: White culture can do all sorts of things and get away with it, but the minute a black person does it, it's interpreted in some way.
Jamaica Kincaid
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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.
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 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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The African-American is often used, and has conspired with the rest of America to be used, as a diversion from America's problems. I wish African-Americans would stop contributing to this sideshow. I also wish all African-Americans would cease to sing and dance just for a generation. I think we provide too much entertainment.
Jamaica Kincaid
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A professional writer is a joke. You write because you can't do anything else, and then you have another job.
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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My disappointments stand up and grow ever taller. They will not be lost to me.
Jamaica Kincaid
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There's a difference between bravery and rash stupidity.
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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There's something to be said about a slightly plump person—you have just enough of too much.
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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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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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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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