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This naming of things is so crucial to possession — a spiritual padlock with the key thrown irretrievably away — that it is a murder, an erasing, and it is not surprising that when people have felt themselves prey to it (conquest), among their first acts of liberation is to change their names...
Jamaica Kincaid
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At that moment, I missed my mother more than I had ever imagined possible and wanted only to live somewhere quiet and beautiful with her alone, but also at that moment I wanted only to see her lying dead, all withered and in a coffin at my feet.
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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.
Jamaica Kincaid
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I had been a girl of whom certain things were expected, none of them too bad: a career as a nurse, for example; a sense of duty to my parents; obedience to the law and worship of convention. But in one year of being away from home, that girl had gone out of existence.
Jamaica Kincaid
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We were afraid of the dead because we never could tell when they might show up again.
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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.
Jamaica Kincaid
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I understood that I was inventing myself, and that I was doing this more in the way of a painter than in the way of a scientist. I could not count on precision or calculation; I could only count on intuition.
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History is full of great events; when the great events are said and done, there will always be someone, a little person, unhappy, dissatisfied, discontented, not at home in her own skin, ready to stir up a whole new set of great events again.
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I swim in a shaft of light, upside down, and I can see myself clearly, through and through, from every angle. Perhaps I stand on the brink of a great discovery.
Jamaica Kincaid
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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.
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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.
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The present will be a now then and the past is now then and the future will be a now then.
Jamaica Kincaid
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Quote of the day
If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing slowly … very slowly.
Gypsy Rose Lee
Jamaica Kincaid
Born:
May 25, 1949
(age 74)
Bio:
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.
Known for:
Annie John (1985)
A Small Place (1988)
The Autobiography of my Mother (1996)
See Now Then (2013)
Jamaica Kincaid on Wikipedia
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