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.

— Jamaica Kincaid

I think life is difficult and that's that. I am not at all - absolutely not at all - interested in the pursuit of happiness. Furthermore, I am not interested in the pursuit of positivity. Furthermore, I am interested in pursuing a truth, and the truth often seems to be not happiness but its opposite.

— Jamaica Kincaid

It is sad that unless you are born a god, your life, from its very beginning, is a mystery to you.

— Jamaica Kincaid

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.

— Jamaica Kincaid

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.

— Jamaica Kincaid

I went back to my cabin and lay down on my berth. Everything trembled as if it had a spring at its very center. I could hear the small waves lap-lapping around the ship. They made an unexpected sound, as if a vessel filled with liquid had been placed on its side and now was slowly emptying out.

— Jamaica Kincaid

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.

— Jamaica Kincaid

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

No one observed and beheld me, I observed and beheld myself; the invisible current went out, and it came back to me. I came to love myself out of defiance, out of despair, because there was nothing else. Such a love will do, but it will only do, it is not the best kind; it has the taste of something left out on a shelf too long that has turned rancid, and when eaten makes the stomach turn. It will do, it will do, but only because there is nothing else to take its place; it is not to be recommended.

— Jamaica Kincaid

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 lamplight. 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.

— Jamaica Kincaid