...yet a memory cannot be trusted, for so much of the experience of the past is determined by the experience of the present.
Interpretation
Our memories are influenced by our current experiences, making them unreliable.
This quote by Jamaica Kincaid suggests that our recollections of past events are not objective truths but are instead shaped by how we perceive our present circumstances. As our current emotions and understanding evolve, they color and alter our memories, reflecting the fluid nature of our relationship with the past.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion about how our current feelings shape our view of past relationships.
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 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.
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 Assembly has witnessed over the last weeks how historical truth is established; once an allegation has been repeated a few times, it is no longer an allegation, it is an established fact, even if no evidence has been brought out in order to support it.
We have been poisoned by fairy tales.
Don't talk to me about naval tradition. It's nothing but rum, sodomy, and the lash.
There is nothing in the world so monstrously vast as our indifference.
It is a man's own mind, not his enemy or foe, that lures him to evil ways.
An outlaw can be defined as somebody who lives outside the law, beyond the law and not necessarily against it.
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