Writing Quotes by Jamaica Kincaid

I write out of defiance.

— Jamaica Kincaid

My writing has always been met with derision or dismissal.

— Jamaica Kincaid

In my writing I'm trying to explore the violations people commit upon each other.

— Jamaica Kincaid

Writing is not a profession. It's a calling. It's almost holy.

— Jamaica Kincaid

I didn't know it was possible to be successful as a writer, so I wasn't afraid to fail.

— Jamaica Kincaid

What I don't write is as important as what I write.

— Jamaica Kincaid

When I write a book, I hope to be beyond mortal by the time I'm finished.

— Jamaica Kincaid

When I'm writing, I think about the garden, and when I'm in the garden I think about writing. I do a lot…

— Jamaica Kincaid

I don't really do anything that isn't about writing, and I don't really know who I am if I'm not thinking about…

— Jamaica Kincaid

People think if you describe someone with glistening brown skin you're writing about race, as if the whole of the African diaspora…

— Jamaica Kincaid

What I really want to write about is injustice and justice, and the different ways human beings organize the two.

— Jamaica Kincaid

When I write nonfiction, it's always absolutely true. There will be no moment in my nonfiction where I have made something up…

— Jamaica Kincaid

The thing about writing in America is that writers in America have an arc. You enter writing as a career, you expect…

— Jamaica Kincaid

The sound of words in a novel is a pretty amazing thing, and I am concerned with the sound of every word…

— Jamaica Kincaid

I think in many ways the problem that my writing would have with an American reviewer is that Americans find difficulty very…

— Jamaica Kincaid

Everyone who knew me as a child, they say they're not surprised that I became a writer because I wrote all the…

— Jamaica Kincaid

For me, writing isn't a way of being public or private; it's just a way of being. The process is always full…

— Jamaica Kincaid

In my writing I'm trying to explore the violations people commit upon each other. And the important thing isn't whether I'm angry.…

— Jamaica Kincaid

For me, writing isn't a way of being public or private; it's just a way of being. The process is always full…

— Jamaica Kincaid

I'm always telling my students go to law school or become a doctor, do something, and then write. First of all you…

— Jamaica Kincaid

if I'd thought that nobody would like it as I was writing it, I would have written it even more. But I…

— Jamaica Kincaid

Gardening is really an extended form of reading, of history and philosophy. The garden itself has become like writing a book. I…

— Jamaica Kincaid

I wrote home to say how lovely everything was, and I used flourishing words and phrases, as if I were living life…

— Jamaica Kincaid

I can write anywhere. I actually wrote more than I ever did when I had small children. My children were never a…

— Jamaica Kincaid

When I start to write something, I suppose I want it to change me, to make me into something not myself.

— Jamaica Kincaid

I come from the small island of Antigua and I always wanted to write; I just didn't know that it was possible.

— Jamaica Kincaid

I read about writers who have routines. They write at certain times of the day. I can't do that. I am always…

— Jamaica Kincaid

If you just sit there, and you're a writer, you're bound to write crap. A lot of American writing is crap. And…

— Jamaica Kincaid

A professional writer is a joke. You write because you can't do anything else, and then you have another job.

— Jamaica Kincaid

I write a lot in my head. The revision goes on internally. It's not spontaneous and it doesn't have a schedule.

— Jamaica Kincaid

I would be lost without the feeling of antagonism that people have towards me. I write out of defiance.

— Jamaica Kincaid

So much history, if you or I were to write it, could seem a fiction. These separations, these lines that tell us…

— Jamaica Kincaid

I'm writing out of desperation. I felt compelled to write to make sense of it to myself - so I don't end…

— Jamaica Kincaid

Gardeners (or just plain simple writers who write about the garden) always have something they like intensely and in particular, right at…

— Jamaica Kincaid

In my writing, I'm often describing a universal situation. A situation in which human beings often choose to violate each other. Sometimes…

— Jamaica Kincaid

Race as a subject only comes about because of what I look like. If I say something truthfully, people say "Oh, she's…

— Jamaica Kincaid

You know how some people write every day at a certain point? I'm not like that. I carry something around for a…

— Jamaica Kincaid

“I think in many ways the problem that my writing would have with an American reviewer is that Americans find difficulty very…

— Jamaica Kincaid

The resistance to my work, and to my way of writing, has been there from the beginning. The first things I wrote…

— Jamaica Kincaid

It is true that I am a writer, and I was married to a composer, and I have lived in a small…

— Jamaica Kincaid