Top 140 Jamaica Kincaid Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “The Holocaust happened in Europe, and that’s important to how it is viewed. Had Europeans done such a thing in the far corners of the earth, rather than on their own doorstep, it might not be mentioned in the history books.”

— Jamaica Kincaid

102. “At the door I planted a kiss on Paul’s mouth with an uncontrollable ardor that I actually did feel-a kiss of treachery, for I could still taste the other man in my mouth.”

— Jamaica Kincaid

103. “I think life is difficult and that’s that. I am not at all – absolutely not at all – interested in the pursuit of happiness. I am not interested in the pursuit of positivity. I am interested in pursuing a truth, and the truth often seems to be not happiness but its opposite.”

— Jamaica Kincaid

104. “I read about writers who have routines. They write at certain times of the day. I can’t do that. I am always writing-but in my head.”

— Jamaica Kincaid

105. “For some people, a fixed state of irritation is oxygen. I understand this all too well.”

— Jamaica Kincaid

106. “When people say you’re charming you’re in deep trouble.”

— Jamaica Kincaid

107. “The families of rabbits or woodchucks will eat the salad greens just before they are ready to be picked; I plot ways to kill these animals but can never bring myself to do it...”

— Jamaica Kincaid

108. “I liked that sentence then and I like that sentence now but then I had no way of making any sense of it, I could only keep it in my mind’s eye, where it rested and grew in the embryo that would become my imagination.”

— Jamaica Kincaid

109. “The history of race relations in America is very different than something like the Holocaust.”

— Jamaica Kincaid

110. “I’ve written a book about my mother, and I don’t remember anyone going to Antigua or calling up my mother and verifying her life. There is something about this book that drives people mad with the autobiographical question.”

— Jamaica Kincaid

111. “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.”

— Jamaica Kincaid

112. “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.” If I write about a married person who lives in Vermont, it becomes “Oh, she’s autobiographical.””

— Jamaica Kincaid

113. “People don’t make changes because things are wonderful.”

— Jamaica Kincaid

114. “I’m trying to earn a living in the way that is most enjoyable to me. I love the world of literature, and I hope to support myself in it.”

— Jamaica Kincaid

115. “None of us seem to think that we should draw a line under what would be a satisfactory amount of wealth.”

— Jamaica Kincaid

116. “I’ve never let the criticism deter me.”

— Jamaica Kincaid

117. “I was numb, but it was from not knowing just what this new life would hold for me.”

— Jamaica Kincaid

118. “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.”

— Jamaica Kincaid

119. “I didn’t know it was possible to be successful as a writer, so I wasn’t afraid to fail.”

— Jamaica Kincaid

120. “People only say I’m angry because I’m black and I’m a woman.”

— Jamaica Kincaid

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

— Jamaica Kincaid

122. “When I write a book, I hope to be beyond mortal by the time I’m finished.”

— Jamaica Kincaid

123. “It’s too easy to say this or that is “race,” and that has been a vehicle for an incredible amount of wrong in the world.”

— Jamaica Kincaid

124. “Looking at the horizon again, I saw a lone figure coming toward me, but I wasn’t frightened because I was sure it was my mother. As I got closer to the figure, I could see that it wasn’t my mother, but still I wasn’t frightened because I could see that it was a woman.”

— Jamaica Kincaid

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

— Jamaica Kincaid

126. “I wouldn’t mind being labeled as “angry,” if it wasn’t used once again to denigrate and belittle.”

— Jamaica Kincaid

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

— Jamaica Kincaid

128. “I used to want to be a backup singer. Not a lead singer, because I really can’t sing.”

— Jamaica Kincaid

129. “When once I got to America I fell in love with hippie culture, and I’ve always wanted to live in the country and grow organic vegetables.”

— Jamaica Kincaid

130. “I suppose you could say I love outlaw American culture.”

— Jamaica Kincaid

131. “If I actually ran the world, I’d do it from the kitchen. It’s not anything deliberate or a statement or anything, that’s just how I understand things. It’s arranged along informal lines.”

— Jamaica Kincaid

132. “But mostly I had books – so many books, and they were mine; I would not have to part with them. It had always been a dream of mine to just own a lot of books, to never part with a book once I had read it.”

— Jamaica Kincaid

133. “If you just sit there, and you’re a writer, you’re bound to write crap. A lot of American writing is crap. And a lot of American writers are professionals.”

— Jamaica Kincaid

134. “We had accepted each other’s shortcomings and differences; then, just when we began to feel the yoke of each other’s companionship, just when we began to feel the beginnings of what might eventually lead to lifelong loathing, we decided to move in together. It could have been worse. People marry at times like tat; they then have ten children, live under the same roof for years and years, eventually die and arrange to be buried side by side. We only signed our names to a two year lease.”

— Jamaica Kincaid

135. “That is how I came to think that heavy and hard was the beginning of living, real living; and though I might not end up with a mark on my cheek, I had no doubt that I would end up with a mark somewhere.”

— Jamaica Kincaid

136. “It is true that our skin is sort of more or less the same shade. But is it true that our skin color makes us a distinctive race? No.”

— Jamaica Kincaid

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

— Jamaica Kincaid

138. “Tomorrow exists even though I may not exist in it.”

— Jamaica Kincaid

139. “I’ve come to see that I’m saying something that people generally do not want to hear.”

— Jamaica Kincaid

140. “I know that the fantastic amount of profit that people want to make on anything is damaging. And that none of us seem able to resist it.”

— Jamaica Kincaid

141. “Mariah says, “I have Indian blood in me,” and underneath everything I could swear she says it as if she were announcing her possession of a trophy. How do you get to be the sort of victor who can claim to be the vanquished also?”

— Jamaica Kincaid

142. “She had shown me how to behave when applying for a job, how to show the proper amount of respect, submission, eagerness to please, even though in my heart I would not mean any of those things; she said that as soon as I had the job and was safely in it, I could let my real personality come out. I was not opposed to deception, but I woud have preferred not to start out that way.”

— Jamaica Kincaid

143. “I’ll read anything. In fact, I’ll read while I’m doing other things, which is not a good idea.”

— Jamaica Kincaid

144. “He must have smiled at me, though I don’t really know, but I don’t like to think that I would love someone who hadn’t first smiled at me.”

— Jamaica Kincaid

145. “I would never never read a work of fiction and want to know about the person’s life.”

— Jamaica Kincaid

146. “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 writing.”

— Jamaica Kincaid

147. “I was then at the height of my two-facedness: that is, outside I seemed one way, inside I was another; outside false, inside true. And so I made pleasant little noises that showed both modesty and appreciation, but inside I was making a vow to erase from my mind, line by line, every word of that poem.”

— Jamaica Kincaid

148. “I shall never have the garden I have in my mind, but that for me is the joy of it; certain things can never be realized and so all the more reason to attempt them.”

— Jamaica Kincaid