Jamaica Kincaid

I was a new person then, I knew things I had not known before, I knew things that you can know only…

— Jamaica Kincaid

I'm sometimes afraid I'll cross a line and it'll be difficult to come back, say, to dinner.

— Jamaica Kincaid

This naming of things is so crucial to possession - a spiritual padlock with the key thrown irretrievably away - that it…

— Jamaica Kincaid

I understood that I was inventing myself, and that I was doing this more in the way of a painter than in…

— Jamaica Kincaid

“...she talked in one of her memoirs of ignoring her little brother when she was supposed to be looking after him: "I…

— Jamaica Kincaid

Another thing I like to say to my students is this: "How many Corinthians read Paul's letters?" The answer is none. They…

— Jamaica Kincaid

I swim in a shaft of light, upside down, and I can see myself clearly, through and through, from every angle. Perhaps…

— Jamaica Kincaid

“She smelled sometimes of lemons, sometimes of sage, sometimes of roses, sometimes of bay leaf. At times I would no longer hear…

— Jamaica Kincaid

I've written a book about my mother, and I don't remember anyone going to Antigua or calling up my mother and verifying…

— Jamaica Kincaid

There's a difference between bravery and rash stupidity.

— Jamaica Kincaid

“Have you ever wondered to yourself why it is that all people like me seem to have learned from you is how…

— 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

I am not aware of anything below my neck. I live completely in my head.

— Jamaica Kincaid

Friendship is a simple thing, and yet complicated; friendship is on the surface, something natural, something taken for granted, and yet underneath…

— 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 like to be depressing. I feel it's my duty to make everyone a little less happy. You know that line in…

— 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

“She had too much of everything, and so she longed to have less; less, she was sure, would bring her happiness. To…

— Jamaica Kincaid

I've never let the criticism deter me.

— Jamaica Kincaid

“Looking at the horizon again, I saw a lone figure coming toward me, but I wasn't frightened because I was sure it…

— Jamaica Kincaid

A psychiatrist once asked me to draw a picture of my family. This is when I was a member of a family…

— 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

“There is a certain way that life ought to be, an ideal way, a perfect way, and there is the way that…

— Jamaica Kincaid

Life has a truth to it, and it's complicated - it's love and it's hatred.

— Jamaica Kincaid

I've never gotten used to winter and never will.

— Jamaica Kincaid