283 Quotes by Jamaica Kincaid
- Author Jamaica Kincaid
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[Unhappiness] comes to you. You come into the world screaming. You cry when you're born because your lungs expand. You breathe. I think that's really kind of significant. You come into the world crying, and it's a sign that you're alive.
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- Author Jamaica Kincaid
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I never wanted to live in that place again, but if for some reason I was forced to live there again, I would never accept the harsh judgments made against me by people whose only power to do so was that they had known me from the moment I was born.
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- Author Jamaica Kincaid
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Je comprends seulement maintenant pourquoi les gens mentent sur leur passé, pourquoi ils disent qu'ils sont une chose autre que la chose qu'ils sont réellement, pourquoi ils s'inventent un être qui ne présente aucune ressemblance avec qui ils sont réellement, pourquoi quiconque voudrait avoir le sentiment de n'être de nulle part, de ne venir de personne, d'être tombé du ciel, voilà tout, complet.
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- Author Jamaica Kincaid
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I wrote home to say how lovely everything was, and I used flourishing words and phrases, as if I were living life in a greeting card - the kind that has a satin ribbon on it, and quilted hearts and roses, and is expected to be so precious to the person receiving it that the manufacturer has placed a leaf of plastic on the front to protect it.
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- Author Jamaica Kincaid
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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 lamp-light. 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.
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- Author Jamaica Kincaid
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At the top of the page I wrote my full name [...] At the sight of it, many thoughts rushed through me, but I could write down only this: "I wish I could love someone so much that I would die from it." And then as I looked at this sentence a great deal of shame came over me and I wept and wept so much that the tears fell on the page and caused all the words to become one great big blur.
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- Author Jamaica Kincaid
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I understood finding the place you are born in an unbearable prison and wanting something completely different from what you are familiar with, knowing it represents a haven.
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- Author Jamaica Kincaid
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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?
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- Author Jamaica Kincaid
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Among the beliefs I held about the world was that being beautiful should not matter to a woman, because it was one of those things that would go away--your beauty would go away, and there wouldn't be anything you could do to bring it back.
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