S. J. Kincaid Quotes

There's something to be said about a slightly plump person—you have just enough of too much.

The inevitable is no less a shock just because it is inevitable.

Express everything you like. No word can hurt you. None. No idea can hurt you. Not being able to express an idea or word will hurt you more. Like a bullet.

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.

People don't make changes because things are wonderful.

I would be lost without the feeling of antagonism that people have towards me. I write out of defiance.

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

I'm so used to being misunderstood.

...yet a memory cannot be trusted, for so much of the experience of the past is determined by the experience of the present.

A great piece of literature encompasses all that is and all that will be.

When I'm writing, I think about the garden, and when I'm in the garden I think about writing. I do a lot of writing by putting something in the ground.

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

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

I like melancholy. I like to pretend that I'm alone in the world and I'm just sort of abandoned.

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.

At the time I was taught to read, it was an Eden-like time of my life. My mother adored me. Everyone adored me. So I associate reading with enormous pleasure.

People think if you describe someone with glistening brown skin you're writing about race, as if the whole of the African diaspora is in someone's brown skin.

Habit gives endurance, and fatigue is the best night cap.

The slave trade was globalism. Why people insist that globalism, after its hideous history, is a good thing, I do not know.

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.

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.

I think a woman is powerless if she cannot freely claim the right to her reproductive capacity. Society can talk about anything it likes, except a woman's reproductive existence.

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

What I don't write is as important as what I write.

Here I am, a product of something really vicious, product of the Atlantic slave trade. And yet, I give nary a thought to some of the awful things happening right now in the world.

I used to want to be a backup singer. Not a lead singer, because I really can't sing.

Time is the element that controls the consciousness, the very being of the people.

The garden has taught me to live, to appreciate the times when things are fallow and when they're not.

the first step in claiming yourself is anger. You get mad. And you can't do anything before you get angry. And I recommend getting very angry to everyone, anyone.

Friendship is a simple thing, and yet complicated; friendship is on the surface, something natural, something taken for granted, and yet underneath one could find worlds.

when people say you're charming you are in deep trouble.

Every time I end a book, I look down at myself.

I'm sometimes afraid I'll cross a line and it'll be difficult to come back, say, to dinner.

Writing is not a profession. It's a calling. It's almost holy.

Love and hatred don't take turns; they exist side by side at the same time. And one's duty, one's obligation every day, is to choose to follow the nobler one.

The past is a room full of baggage and rubbish and sometimes things that are of use, but if they are of real use, I have kept them.

I didn't really understand racism because I grew up in an all-black society, so I didn't see how it was possible not to like me!

I can't get upset about 'offensive to women' or 'offensive to blacks' or 'offensive to Native Americans' or 'offensive to Jews' ... Offend! I can't get worked up about it. Offend!

if I'd thought that nobody would like it as I was writing it, I would have written it even more. But I never think of the audience. I never think of people reading. I never think of people, period.

Who you are is a mystery no one can answer, not even you.

No matter how happy I had been in the past I do not long for it. The present is always the moment for which I love.

I was a new person then, I knew things I had not known before, I knew things that you can know only if you have been through what I had just been through.

I love planting. I love digging holes, putting plants in, tapping them in. And I love weeding, but I don't like tidying up the garden afterwards.

I'll read anything. In fact, I'll read while I'm doing other things, which is not a good idea.

It's very funny, American society: White culture can do all sorts of things and get away with it, but the minute a black person does it, it's interpreted in some way.

I like cooking, but I think someone else ought to do the dishes.

I didn't know it was possible to be successful as a writer, so I wasn't afraid to fail.

When I start to write something, I suppose I want it to change me, to make me into something not myself.

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.

I loved Charlotte Bronte when I was little, and I wanted to be Charlotte Bronte the way people want to be a princess.