Jamaica Kincaid: "I do not know the end of my..."

About Jamaica Kincaid

Jamaica Kincaid (; born Elaine Cynthia Potter Richardson on May 25, 1949) is an Antiguan–American novelist, essayist, gardener, and gardening writer. Born in St. John's, the capital of Antigua and Barbuda, she lives in North Bennington, Vermont, and is Professor of African and African American Studies in Residence Emerita at...

More quotations from Jamaica Kincaid

I am not at all interested in the pursuit of happiness. I am interested in pursuing a truth, and the truth often seems to be not happiness but its opposite.

—Jamaica Kincaid

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.

—Jamaica Kincaid

alone mother quiet

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

life mother shadow

More quotations tagged with “beginning”

There will come a time when you believe everything is finished; that will be the beginning.

—Louis L'Amour in Lonely on the Mountain

time perception finishing beginning

Endings are not always bad. Most times they're just beginnings in disguise.

—Kim Harrison in Something Deadly This Way Comes

endings beginning disguise

In the beginning there was nothing. God said, 'Let there be light!' And there was light. There was still nothing, but you could see it a whole lot better.

—Ellen DeGeneres

God creation light nothing beginning

I have twenty-one pages, unusable, unprintable, destructive of the book as my mind still partly sees it, contradictory of character and inconsistent in tone. But I am undoubtedly started.

—Janet Burroway

writing art work beginning

It is difficult to know at what moment love begins; it is less difficult to know that it has begun.

—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

love perception beginning

History

1 Jan 2016 Added
26 Oct 2026 Wording changed

Previous wording

I do not know the end of my living and the beginning of my dying, for they — living and dying — are both mixed up.

I do not know the end of my living and the beginning of my dying, for they—living and dying—are both mixed up.

About Jamaica Kincaid

More quotations from Jamaica Kincaid

More quotations tagged with “beginning”

History