Jamaica Kincaid Quotes

Each time I write, each time the authentic words break through, I am changed. The older order that I was collapses and dies. I lose control. I do not know exactly what words will appear on the page. I follow language. I follow the sound of the words, and I am surprised and transformed by what I record.

I'm finding things out about myself as a person - as a writer - as I write, and so are the people who listen to what I do. But they have this additional aspect of how they take the stuff that I do, and so it broadens the work and it creates this strange connection. It's really a way of strangers communicating through this third thing, which is a body of work. But really, I know it's a cliché to say I write for myself, but I write for myself.

The solution begins with a deeper transformation that must occur in each of us. I AM isn’t as much about what you can do, as who you can be. And from that transformation of being, action will naturally follow.

We are always pregnant with a truer version of ourselves.

Writing is a subtle art that is reached mostly by self-discovery and experimentation.

I'm only interested in people engaged in a project of self-transformation.

One poem or story doesn't matter one way or the other. It's the process of writing and life that matters.

You get caught up in a cycle at some point, so I broke the cycle and decided; I'm going to really write a lot of books, because I need to get in touch with that part of myself in order to make more music.

What makes me put pen to paper? You know, that's the million-dollar question. I've been writing since I've been reading. It's not a question I think that's even meant to be answered, but it's something you always seek to discover the answer to. And the process of filmmaking is one of discovery, and self-discovery at that. Pleasure... it's not exactly what I would call fun, but it's absorbing.

Writing is an incessant process of discovery.

I'm finding things out about myself as a person - as a writer - as I write, and so are the people who listen to what I do. But they have this additional aspect of how they take the stuff that I do, and so it broadens the work, and it creates this strange connection.

I write based on powerful inner impulses, and those seem to shift over time.

I think it's natural for an artist to explore as they evolve.

Whoever undertakes to create soon finds himself engaged in creating himself.

I have become infected, now that I see how beautifully a book is coming out of all this.

The moment in between what you once were, and who you are now becoming, is where the dance of life really takes place.

Evolution happens in nature and in individuals. I want to participate actively in its happening within me.

I'm a different athlete, I'm a different person.

I write songs to turn myself into something else. And then I become that, and I want to become something else.

It was kind of enlightening to become a playwright.

Each film I make changes me in some way. When I start the picture I'm one person and by the time I finish I'm another.

Everyone has a book inside of them - but it doesn't do any good until you pry it out.

Who you are and what you think of yourself is constantly changing.

My identity started developing through the songs I was writing.

I look for roles that allow me to immerse in different worlds, immerse in worlds that are different from mine. Then, when you finish a film, you're a different person. I look for that. I look to be impacted, to be transformed, changed by my roles. That's why I do this.