I've come to see that I'm saying something that people generally do not want to hear. Jamaica Kincaid More Quotes by Jamaica Kincaid More Quotes From Jamaica Kincaid There's something to be said about a slightly plump person—you have just enough of too much. Jamaica Kincaid too-muchenoughsaid 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. Jamaica Kincaid hurtfearideas People don't make changes because things are wonderful. Jamaica Kincaid making-changeswonderfulpeople Every time I end a book, I look down at myself. Jamaica Kincaid book 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 scientistintuitionway I had been a girl of whom certain things were expected, none of them too bad: a career as a nurse, for example; a sense of duty to my parents; obedience to the law and worship of convention. But in one year of being away from home, that girl had gone out of existence. Jamaica Kincaid girlhomeyears I was given a dictionary when I was seven, and I read it because I had nothing else to read. I read it the way you read a book. Jamaica Kincaid novelistsreadingbook It is true that our skin is sort of more or less the same shade. But is it true that our skin color makes us a distinctive race? No. Jamaica Kincaid skin-colorskinsrace People only say I’m angry because I’m black and I’m a woman. Jamaica Kincaid angryblackpeople One day I was living silently in a personal hell, without anyone to tell what I felt, without even knowing that the feelings I had were possible to have; and then one day I was not living like that at all. I had begun to see the past like this: there is a line; you can draw it yourself, or sometimes it gets drawn for you; either way, there it is, your past, a collection of people you used to be and things you used to do. Your past is the person you no longer are, the situations you are no longer in. Jamaica Kincaid knowingpeoplepast I would be lost without the feeling of antagonism that people have towards me. I write out of defiance. Jamaica Kincaid feelingswritingpeople 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-indiestalkingyears ...yet a memory cannot be trusted, for so much of the experience of the past is determined by the experience of the present. Jamaica Kincaid determinedmemoriespast A professional writer is a joke. You write because you can't do anything else, and then you have another job. Jamaica Kincaid jokeswritingjobs The slave trade was globalism. Why people insist that globalism, after its hideous history, is a good thing, I do not know. Jamaica Kincaid slavegood-thingspeople 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 gardenwritingthinking One's obligation every day, is to choose to follow the nobler one. Jamaica Kincaid obligation A great piece of literature encompasses all that is and all that will be. Jamaica Kincaid piecesliterature 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 blackwhitedoe 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 selfcountrypast
