Jamaica Kincaid

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

“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.”

“One doesn't have to pursue unhappiness. It 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 sig...”

“One of the things reading does, it makes your loneliness manageable if you are an essentially lonely person.”

“It is true that I am a writer, and I was married to a composer, and I have lived in a small village in New England, but my children are not named Heracles and Persephone, and my daughter doe...”

“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.”

“You know how some people write every day at a certain point? I'm not like that. I carry something around for a long time. I weigh the words and the sentences. I weigh the paragraphs. The pro...”

“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.”

“I write a lot in my head. The revision goes on internally. It's not spontaneous and it doesn't have a schedule.”

“I grew up in a place where books were very, very scarce, and I loved to read. I used to read the writing on my breakfast Ovaltine over and over again because it was in front of me, and I cou...”

“Children like their mothers especially to be standing still and watching them, even if they are sleeping. At least that's how I felt. There's nothing wrong with the self-interest of children...”

“People only say I'm angry because I'm black and I'm a woman. But all sorts of people write with strong feeling, the way I do.”

“I have a photograph of myself when I was 2 years of age, and I don't recognize the person in the photograph. She doesn't look anything like me, and I can't find any trace of her in me physic...”