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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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Jamaica Kincaid
Age: 75
Born: 1949
Born: May 25
Novelist
Playwright
University Teacher
Writer
St John's
Elanie Potter Richardson
Elaine Cynthia Potter Richardson
Make
Suppose
Start
Write
Change
Writing
Something

More quotes by Jamaica Kincaid

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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.
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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.
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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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I would never never read a work of fiction and want to know about the person's life.
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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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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.
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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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There's a difference between bravery and rash stupidity.
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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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I loved Charlotte Bronte when I was little, and I wanted to be Charlotte Bronte the way people want to be a princess.
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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.
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He must have smiled at me, though I don't really know, but I don't like to think that I would love someone who hadn't first smiled at me.
Jamaica Kincaid
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Sometimes when someone says something stupid, my friends and I just read the reviews out loud and collapse with laughter at the stupidity of it all.
Jamaica Kincaid
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I'm so used to being misunderstood.
Jamaica Kincaid
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The thing we call romance is a diversion from something truer, which is life.
Jamaica Kincaid
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I understood that I was inventing myself, and that I was doing this more in the way of a painter than in the way of a scientist. I could not count on precision or calculation I could only count on intuition.
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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There's something to be said about a slightly plump person—you have just enough of too much.
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Something settiled inside me, something heavy and hard. It stayed there, and i could not think of one thing to make it go away. I thought, So this must be living, this must be the beginning of the time people later refer to as 'years ago, when I was young'.
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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