I have no credentials. I have no money. I literally come from a poor place. I was a servant. I dropped out of college. The next thing you know I'm writing for the 'New Yorker,' I have this sort of life, and it must seem annoying to people.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the journey of overcoming adversity to achieve success despite lacking traditional qualifications.
Jamaica Kincaid's quote encapsulates her remarkable journey from humble beginnings to becoming a celebrated writer, emphasizing that one's background or resources do not define their potential for success. It serves as an inspiration for those who feel disadvantaged, illustrating that talent, determination, and perseverance can lead to achieving great things, even when the odds seem stacked against you.
In practice
In a motivational speech about achieving dreams despite challenges.
Something settiled inside me, something heavy and hard. It stayed there, and i could not think of one thing to make it go away. I thought, So this must be living, this must be the beginning of the time people later refer to as 'years ago, when I was young'.
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.
I read about writers who have routines. They write at certain times of the day. I can't do that. I am always writing-but in my head.
I didn't think of myself as an outsider because of my race because... where I grew up I was the same race as almost everyone else... It is true that I noticed things that no one else seemed to notice. And I think only people who are outsiders do this.
I come from a little island with the Caribbean Sea on one side and the Atlantic Ocean on the other. I come from, really, nowhere, and for me, the fiction and the nonfiction, creative or otherwise, all come from the same place.
The English language started out as a distortion in my life, but nothing remains the same, and so the distortion is now just normal. That is one of the things that will happen to all distortions: They become normal and turn into something else.
I'm profoundly changed. There's a bittersweet emotion that I feel from playing this role. . . . I want the world to be different because I was here. However lofty or crazy or delusional that may sound, I want people's lives to be better because I was here.
If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.
I want you to be afraid to turn the page (and to do that) you need to show right from the beginning that you're playing for keeps.
If you’re alive, you can’t be bored in San Francisco. If you’re not alive, San Francisco will bring you to life.
If you think you aren't valid for whatever reason, let my existence and the way the world embraces my existence tell you that you are valid. You deserve to look, live, and walk through the world however you see fit. That's why I find it extremely important to be so out, so black, and so myself.
The part of the process that's exciting to me is feeling like I'm in a place I've never been before, in every way. Without that, I don't know if I'd be a writer.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.