The thing about writing in America is that writers in America have an arc. You enter writing as a career, you expect to be successful, and really it's the wrong thing. It's not a profession. — Jamaica Kincaid Copy Share Image
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… — Jamaica Kincaid Copy Share Image
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… — Jamaica Kincaid Copy Share Image
The slave trade was globalism. Why people insist that globalism, after its hideous history, is a good thing, I do not know. — Jamaica Kincaid Copy Share Image
I have no credentials. I have no money. I literally come from a poor place. I was a servant. I dropped out of college.… — Jamaica Kincaid Copy Share Image
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. The more… — Jamaica Kincaid Copy Share Image
"Race." I really can't understand it as anything other than something people say. The people who have said that you and I are both… — Jamaica Kincaid Copy Share Image
Race as a subject only comes about because of what I look like. If I say something truthfully, people say "Oh, she's so angry."… — Jamaica Kincaid Copy Share Image
in the place I am from ... a grave is topped off with a huge mound of loose earth - carelessly, as if piled up in child's play, not serious at all - because death is just another way of being, and the dead will not stay put, and sometimes the actions of the dead are more significant, more profound,… — Jamaica Kincaid Copy Share
I like melancholy. I like to pretend that I'm alone in the world and I'm just sort of abandoned. — Jamaica Kincaid Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
“Have you ever wondered to yourself why it is that all people like me seem to have learned from you is how to imprison and murder each other, how to govern badly, and how to take the wealth of our country and place it in Swiss bank accounts? Have you ever wondered why it is that all we seem to… — Jamaica Kincaid Copy Share
Love and hatred don't take turns; they exist side by side at the same time. And one's duty, one's obligation every day, is to… — Jamaica Kincaid Copy Share Image
“Do you see the queer thing about people like me? Sometimes we hold your retribution.” — Jamaica Kincaid Copy Share Image
