Quotes from Jamaica Kincaid

I grew up in a place where books were very, very scarce, and I loved to read. I used to read the writing on my breakfast Ovaltine over and over again because it was in front of me, and I couldn't help but read anything that was in front of me.

I picked a name that was a combination of an island name and a very English name. Havana was one choice and Dominico was another, but I liked the combination of Jamaica Kincaid.

I like to be in my pajamas all day. Sometimes I don't wash for days because I like to read and sit around. I like to eat in bed.

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.

I'll read anything. In fact, I'll read while I'm doing other things, which is not a good idea.

The slave trade was globalism. Why people insist that globalism, after its hideous history, is a good thing, I do not know.

When I write nonfiction, it's always absolutely true. There will be no moment in my nonfiction where I have made something up and have to apologize to the bullying hostess of a talk show.

You know how some people write every day at a certain point? I'm not like that. I carry something around for a long time. I weigh the words and the sentences. I weigh the paragraphs. The process is much more meditative for me.

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.

The garden has taught me to live, to appreciate the times when things are fallow and when they're not.

It is sad that unless you are born a god, your life,from its very beginning, is a mystery to you.

I have a sense of destiny because of my mother, who was an extraordinary person but a terrible candidate for mother. She was like the god Cronus, who gave birth to his children in the morning and then ate them at night.

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

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.

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.

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

People don't make changes because things are wonderful.

Time is the element that controls the consciousness, the very being of the people.

The thing we call romance is a diversion from something truer, which is life.

What distinguished my life from my brother's is that my mother didn't like me. When I became a woman, I seemed to repel her.

Every time I end a book, I look down at myself.

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

Tomorrow exists even though I may not exist in it.

Everyone who knew me as a child, they say they're not surprised that I became a writer because I wrote all the time. I don't remember writing, because I wouldn't have had the tools, but I think what they are saying is that I would pretend I was a writer.