Jamaica Kincaid
Jamaica Kincaid
Jamaica Kincaid is an Antiguan-American novelist, essayist, gardener, and gardening writer. She was born in St. John's, Antigua, which is part of the twin-island nation of Antigua and Barbuda. She lives in North Bennington, Vermont, during the summers and teaches at Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, California as the "Josephine Olp Weeks Chair and Professor of Literature" as well as the "Professor of African and American studies in Residence" at Harvard during the academic year. Kincaid is an award-winning writer...
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth25 May 1949
tone doe truthful
I'm always surprised to hear or read my work described, "In angry tones, she says." No! In truthful tones! Does truth have a tone? I don't know.
people trouble charming
when people say you're charming you are in deep trouble.
night giving endurance
Habit gives endurance, and fatigue is the best night cap.
may tomorrow
Tomorrow exists even though I may not exist in it.
hatred complicated
Life has a truth to it, and it's complicated - it's love and it's hatred.
mother brother distinguished
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.
mother echoes feels
I had come to feel that my mother's love for me was designed solely to make me into an echo of her; and I didn't know why, but I felt that I would rather be dead than become just an echo of someone.
mother shadow rooms
The shadow of my mother danced around the room to a tune that my own shadow sang.
mother wall eye
Out of the corner of one eye, I could see my mother. Out of the corner of the other eye, I could see her shadow on the wall, cast there by the lamplight. It was a big and solid shadow, and it looked so much like my mother that I became frightened. For I could not be sure whether for the rest of my life I would be able to tell when it was really my mother and when it was really her shadow standing between me and the rest of the world.
ocean sea islands
I come from a little island with the Caribbean Sea on one side and the Atlantic Ocean on the other. I come from, really, nowhere, and for me, the fiction and the nonfiction, creative or otherwise, all come from the same place.
beautiful brother men
The photograph of my brother that is in this album shows a young man, beautiful and perfect in the way of young people, for young people are always perfect and beautiful until they are not, until the moment they just are not.
writing sound novel
The sound of words in a novel is a pretty amazing thing, and I am concerned with the sound of every word I write.
dog should-have long
But no longer could I aks God what to do, since the answer, I was sure, would not suit me. I could do what suited me know, as long as I could pay for it. 'As long as I could pay for it.' That phrase soon became the tail that wagged my dog. If I had died then, it should have been my epigraph.
garden enemy sculpture
In a way, a garden is the most useless of creations, the most slippery of creations: it is not like a painting or a piece of sculpture-it won't accrue value as time goes on. Time is its enemy' time passing is merely the countdown for the parting between garden and gardener.