Quotes from Jamaica Kincaid

In the past, the thought of being in my present situation had been a comfort, but now I did not even have this to look forward to, and so I lay down on my bed and dreamt I was eating a bowl of pink mullet and green figs cooked in coconut milk, and it had been cooked by my grandmother, which was why the taste of it pleased me so, for she was the person I liked best in all the world and those were the things I like best to eat also.

they were talking about themselves, and they seemed to take for granted that everything they said mattered. They were artists. I had heard of people in this position. I had never seen an example in the place where I came from. I noticed that mostly they were men. It seemed to be a position that allowed for irresponsibility, so perhaps it was much better suited to men.

Contempla la bellezza nelle cose semplici: il sole che sorge da quell'immensa, scintillante distesa d'acqua che è il mare; sorge ogni giorno in modo nuovo, come fosse la prima volta. <> dice nel suo cuore, perchè sente la fresca brezza sulla nuca. Ma più volte sente l'inutilità di tutto ciò, perchè davanti a lui si stende un silenzio spaventoso, una vastità, dalla lunghezza e larghezza e profondità incommensurabili. Il nulla

I said that she had acted like a saint, but that since I was living in this real world I had really wanted just a mother.

Friendship is a simple thing, and yet complicated; friendship is on the surface, something natural, something taken for granted, and yet underneath one could find worlds.

There's something to be said about a slightly plump person—you have just enough of too much.

No matter how happy I had been in the past I do not long for it. The present is always the moment for which I love.

I wish that I could love someone so much that I would die from it.

I was a new person then, I knew things I had not known before, I knew things that you can know only if you have been through what I had just been through.

That was the moment he got the idea he possessed me in a certain way, and that was the moment I grew tired of him.

The inevitable is no less a shock just because it is inevitable.

Why is a picture of something real eventually more exciting than the thing itself?

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.

Something settiled inside me, something heavy and hard. It stayed there, and i could not think of one thing to make it go away. I thought, So this must be living, this must be the beginning of the time people later refer to as 'years ago, when I was young'.

The past is a room full of baggage and rubbish and sometimes things that are of use, but if they are of real use, I have kept them.

I did not care about being a virgin and had long been looking forward to the day when I could rid myself of that status, but when I saw how much it mattered to him to be the first boy I had been with, I could not five him such a hold over me.

Everybody knew that men have no morals, that they do not know how to behave, that they do not know how to treat other people. It was why men like laws so much; it was why they had to invent such things-they need a guide. When they are not sure what to do, they consult this guide. If the guide gives them advice they don't like, they change the guide.

That the world I was in could be soft, lovely, and nourishing was more than I could bear, and so I stood there and wept, for I didn't want to love one more thing that could make my heart break into a million little pieces at my feet.

Lucy, a girl's name for Lucifer. That my mother would have found me devil-like did not surprise me, for I often thought of her as god-like, and are not the children of gods devils? I did not grow to like the name Lucy-I would have much preferred to be called Lucifer outright-but whenever I saw my name I always reached out to give it a strong embrace.

For isn't it odd that the only language I have in which to speak of this crime is the language of the criminal who committed the crime?

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

Of course his life could be found in the pages of a book; I had just begun to notice that the lives of men always are.

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

The space between the idea of something and its reality is always wide and deep and dark. The longer they are kept apart—idea of thing, reality of thing—the wider the width, the deeper the depth, the thicker and darker the darkness.