18 Quotes by Jamaica Kincaid about writing

  • 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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    Gardeners (or just plain simple writers who write about the garden) always have something they like intensely and in particular, right at the moment you engage them in the reality of the borders they cultivate, the space in the garden they occupy at any moment, they like in particular this, or they like in particular that.

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  • Author Jamaica Kincaid
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    I'm always telling my students go to law school or become a doctor, do something, and then write. First of all you should have something to write about, and you only have something to write about if you do something.

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

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  • Author Jamaica Kincaid
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    So much history, if you or I were to write it, could seem a fiction. These separations, these lines that tell us this is fiction or non-fiction, that this is history or this is a novel, are often useless.

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  • Author Jamaica Kincaid
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    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."

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  • Author Jamaica Kincaid
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    What I really want to write about is injustice and justice, and the different ways human beings organize the two.

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