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I'm Writing Out Of Desperation. I Felt Compelled To Write To Make Sense Of It To Myself - So I Don't End Up Saying Peculiar Things Like 'i'm Black And I'm Proud.' I Write So I Don't End Up As A Set Of Slogans And Clichés.

-Jamaica Kincaid

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I'm Writing Out Of

Jamaica Kincaid

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I'm Writing Out Of Desperation. I Felt Compelled To Write To Make Sense Of It To Myself - So I Don't End Up Saying Peculiar Things Like 'i'm Black And I'm Proud.' I Write So I Don't End Up As A Set Of Slogans And Clichés.

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In The Place I Am From ... A Grave Is Topped Off With A Huge Mound Of Loose Earth - Carelessly, As If Piled Up In Child's Play, Not Serious At All - Because Death Is Just Another Way Of Being, And The Dead Will Not Stay Put, And Sometimes The Actions Of The Dead Are More Significant, More Profound, Than Their Actions In Life, And No Structure Of Concrete Or Stone Can Contain Them.

It's Not That I'm A Very Good Person. It's That I Think I Should At Least Look At The Ways In Which I Am Not A Good Person, The Ways In Which I So Readily Become The Person Who Would Not Notice That The Wonderful Clothing I'm Wearing Someone Is Probably Dying For.

I Think In Many Ways The Problem That My Writing Would Have With An American Reviewer Is That Americans Find Difficulty Very Hard To Take. They Are Inevitably Looking For A Happy Ending.

All Of These Declarations Of What Writing Ought To Be, Which I Had Myself-though, Thank God I Had Never Committed Them To Paper-i Think Are Nonsense. You Write What You Write, And Then Either It Holds Up Or It Doesn't Hold Up. There Are No Rules Or Particular Sensibilities. I Don't Believe In That At All Anymore.

I Wish That I Could Love Someone So Much That I Would Die From It.

I Think A Woman Is Powerless If She Cannot Freely Claim The Right To Her Reproductive Capacity. Society Can Talk About Anything It Likes, Except A Woman's Reproductive Existence.

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'.

I Like To Be In My Pajamas All Day. Sometimes I Don't Wash For Days Because I Like To Read And Sit Around. I Like To Eat In Bed.

I Would Pretend When I Was A Child That I Was Charlotte Brontë, Because I'd Read Jane Eyre When I Was Ten And, Although I Didn't Understand It, I Loved The Idea That This Woman Had Written A Book. I Wanted To Be Her.

Children Like Their Mothers Especially To Be Standing Still And Watching Them, Even If They Are Sleeping. At Least That's How I Felt. There's Nothing Wrong With The Self-interest Of Children; It's Just The Way They Are.

This Naming Of Things Is So Crucial To Possession - A Spiritual Padlock With The Key Thrown Irretrievably Away - That It Is A Murder, An Erasing, And It Is Not Surprising That When People Have Felt Themselves Prey To It (conquest), Among Their First Acts Of Liberation Is To Change Their Names.

I Love Planting. I Love Digging Holes, Putting Plants In, Tapping Them In. And I Love Weeding, But I Don't Like Tidying Up The Garden Afterwards.

I'm Sometimes Afraid I'll Cross A Line And It'll Be Difficult To Come Back, Say, To Dinner.

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.

Had The Holocaust Happened In Tahiti Or The Congo, As It Has; Had It Happened In South America, As It Has; Had It Happened In The West Indies, As It Has - You Must Remember That Within Fifty Years Of Columbus's Arrival, Only The Bones Remained Of The People Called The Arawaks, With One Or Two Of Them In Spain As Specimens. Had The Holocaust Committed Under The Nazis Happened Somewhere Else, We Wouldn't Be Talking About It The Way We Talk About It.

One Day I Was Living Silently In A Personal Hell, Without Anyone To Tell What I Felt, Without Even Knowing That The Feelings I Had Were Possible To Have; And Then One Day I Was Not Living Like That At All. I Had Begun To See The Past Like This: There Is A Line; You Can Draw It Yourself, Or Sometimes It Gets Drawn For You; Either Way, There It Is, Your Past, A Collection Of People You Used To Be And Things You Used To Do. Your Past Is The Person You No Longer Are, The Situations You Are No Longer In.

Like Father Like Son, Like Mother Like Daughter!

On Their Way To Freedom, Some People Find Riches, Some People Find Death.

The Families Of Rabbits Or Woodchucks Will Eat The Salad Greens Just Before They Are Ready To Be Picked; I Plot Ways To Kill These Animals But Can Never Bring Myself To Do It.

That Is How I Came To Think That Heavy And Hard Was The Beginning Of Living, Real Living; And Though I Might Not End Up With A Mark On My Cheek, I Had No Doubt That I Would End Up With A Mark Somewhere.

I'm So Used To Being Misunderstood.

Being Misunderstood

Writing Is Not A Profession. It's A Calling. It's Almost Holy.

My Disappointments Stand Up And Grow Ever Taller. They Will Not Be Lost To Me.

I Would Never Never Read A Work Of Fiction And Want To Know About The Person's Life.

Sometimes When Someone Says Something Stupid, My Friends And I Just Read The Reviews Out Loud And Collapse With Laughter At The Stupidity Of It All.

I'll Read Anything. In Fact, I'll Read While I'm Doing Other Things, Which Is Not A Good Idea.

That Was The Moment He Got The Idea He Possessed Me In A Certain Way, And That Was The Moment I Grew Tired Of Him.

I Come From The Small Island Of Antigua And I Always Wanted To Write; I Just Didn't Know That It Was Possible.

I Didn't Really Understand Racism Because I Grew Up In An All-black Society, So I Didn't See How It Was Possible Not To Like Me!

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 Write A Lot In My Head. The Revision Goes On Internally. It's Not Spontaneous And It Doesn't Have A Schedule.

I Had Been A Girl Of Whom Certain Things Were Expected, None Of Them Too Bad: A Career As A Nurse, For Example; A Sense Of Duty To My Parents; Obedience To The Law And Worship Of Convention. But In One Year Of Being Away From Home, That Girl Had Gone Out Of Existence.

I Used To Want To Be A Backup Singer. Not A Lead Singer, Because I Really Can't Sing.

In My Writing I'm Trying To Explore The Violations People Commit Upon Each Other.

If I'd Thought That Nobody Would Like It As I Was Writing It, I Would Have Written It Even More. But I Never Think Of The Audience. I Never Think Of People Reading. I Never Think Of People, Period.

The Truth We Have To Face About The World We Live In Is That It's Driven By Profit, And Contradictions And Doubts Are Not Profitable. They Yield Wisdom, But Wisdom Is Not Profitable. I Find Pleasure In Doubt, But Let's Face It, My Pleasure Is Not Very Profitable. To Me, The Truth Is That Things Mean Many Things At Once, And All Of Them Opposed To Each Other, And All Of Them True.

But No Longer Could I Aks God What To Do, Since The Answer, I Was Sure, Would Not Suit Me. I Could Do What Suited Me Know, As Long As I Could Pay For It. 'as Long As I Could Pay For It.' That Phrase Soon Became The Tail That Wagged My Dog. If I Had Died Then, It Should Have Been My Epigraph.

Love And Hatred Don't Take Turns; They Exist Side By Side At The Same Time. And One's Duty, One's Obligation Every Day, Is To Choose To Follow The Nobler One.

Every Native Of Every Place Is A Potential Tourist, And Every Tourist Is A Native Of Somewhere. Every Native Everywhere Lives A Life Of Overwhelming And Crushing Banality And Boredom And Desperation And Depression, And Every Deed, Good And Bad, Is An Attempt To Forget This.

...yet A Memory Cannot Be Trusted, For So Much Of The Experience Of The Past Is Determined By The Experience Of The Present.

In Isolation I Ruthlessly Plow The Deep Silences, Seeking My Opportunities Like A Miner Seeking Veins Of Treasures. In What Shallow Glimmering Space Shall I Find What Glimmering Glory?

I Had Come To Feel That My Mother's Love For Me Was Designed Solely To Make Me Into An Echo Of Her; And I Didn't Know Why, But I Felt That I Would Rather Be Dead Than Become Just An Echo Of Someone.

A Tourist Is An Ugly Human Being.

People Don't Make Changes Because Things Are Wonderful.

I Was Then At The Height Of My Two-facedness: That Is, Outside I Seemed One Way, Inside I Was Another; Outside False, Inside True.

The African-american Is Often Used, And Has Conspired With The Rest Of America To Be Used, As A Diversion From America's Problems. I Wish African-americans Would Stop Contributing To This Sideshow. I Also Wish All African-americans Would Cease To Sing And Dance Just For A Generation. I Think We Provide Too Much Entertainment.

I Loved Charlotte Bronte When I Was Little, And I Wanted To Be Charlotte Bronte The Way People Want To Be A Princess.

Gardening Is Really An Extended Form Of Reading, Of History And Philosophy. The Garden Itself Has Become Like Writing A Book. I Walk Around And Walk Around. Apparently People Often See Me Standing There And They Wave To Me And I Don't See Them Because I Am Reading The Landscape.

Everything I Do Is Because Of Writing. If I Go For A Walk, It's Because I'm Thinking Of Writing. I Go Look At Flowers, I Go Look At The Garden, I Go Look At A Museum, But It's All Coming Back To Writing.

Why Is A Picture Of Something Real Eventually More Exciting Than The Thing Itself?

Of Course, Every Time I End A Book, I Look Down At Myself And I'm Just The Same. I'm Always Disappointed That I'm Just The Same, But Not Enough To Never Do It Again!

The Sound Of Words In A Novel Is A Pretty Amazing Thing, And I Am Concerned With The Sound Of Every Word I Write.

I Was Given A Dictionary When I Was Seven, And I Read It Because I Had Nothing Else To Read. I Read It The Way You Read A Book.

I Don't Really Do Anything That Isn't About Writing, And I Don't Really Know Who I Am If I'm Not Thinking About Writing.

It Is Sad That Unless You Are Born A God, Your Life,from Its Very Beginning, Is A Mystery To You.

I'm Always Telling My Students Go To Law School Or Become A Doctor, Do Something, And Then Write. First Of All You Should Have Something To Write About, And You Only Have Something To Write About If You Do Something.

I Was Just Looking At Moving To Cambridge, And A House I Was Looking At Cost A Million Dollars. Because Somehow, That's What A House Costs. And I Was Thinking, "how Can It Be?" And I Was Thinking, "what Am I Doing? Am I Going To Be Niall Ferguson, That Horrible Man?

I'm Writing Out Of Desperation. I Felt Compelled To Write To Make Sense Of It To Myself - So I Don't End Up Saying Peculiar Things Like 'i'm Black And I'm Proud.' I Write So I Don't End Up As A Set Of Slogans And Clichés.

A Psychiatrist Once Asked Me To Draw A Picture Of My Family. This Is When I Was A Member Of A Family Of Four. I Drew The Three Other People In The Family First, Bodies And Heads. And Then, Last, I Began To Draw Myself - But Gave Up.

I Understood That I Was Inventing Myself, And That I Was Doing This More In The Way Of A Painter Than In The Way Of A Scientist. I Could Not Count On Precision Or Calculation; I Could Only Count On Intuition.

The People Who Invented Race, Who Grouped Us Together As "black," Were Inventing And Categorizing Their Ability To Do Something Vicious And Wrong.

One's Obligation Every Day, Is To Choose To Follow The Nobler One.

What I Really Want To Write About Is Injustice And Justice, And The Different Ways Human Beings Organize The Two.

One Doesn't Have To Pursue Unhappiness. It Comes To You. You Come Into The World Screaming. You Cry When You're Born Because Your Lungs Expand. You Breathe. I Think That's Really Kind Of Significant. You Come Into The World Crying, And It's A Sign That You're Alive.

There Are Things That Make Us Choose, On Certain Days, On Certain Nights, The Opposite Of Love, In All Its Variations. But I Want To Acknowledge That With Love And Hate It's Not Simply One Or The Other. It's At Least Two, Three, Four, Five Different Emotions Existing At Once, Side By Side, A Broad Spectrum Of Things Alive.

It's Very Funny, American Society: White Culture Can Do All Sorts Of Things And Get Away With It, But The Minute A Black Person Does It, It's Interpreted In Some Way.

Most Of The Nations That Have Serious Gardening Cultures Have, Or Had, Empires. You Can't Have This Luxury Of Pleasure Without Somebody Paying For It. This Is Nice To Know. It's Nice To Know That When You Sit Down To Enjoy A Plate Of Strawberries, Somebody Got Paid Very Little So That You Could Have Your Strawberries. It Doesn't Mean The Strawberries Will Taste Different, But It's Nice To Enjoy Things Less Than We Do. We Enjoy Things Far Too Much, And It Leads To Incredible Pain And Suffering.

It Is True That Our Skin Is Sort Of More Or Less The Same Shade. But Is It True That Our Skin Color Makes Us A Distinctive Race? No.

When People Say You're Charming You Are In Deep Trouble.

I'm Trying To Earn A Living In The Way That Is Most Enjoyable To Me. I Love The World Of Literature, And I Hope To Support Myself In It.

I Like Cooking, But I Think Someone Else Ought To Do The Dishes.

That The World I Was In Could Be Soft, Lovely, And Nourishing Was More Than I Could Bear, And So I Stood There And Wept, For I Didn't Want To Love One More Thing In My Life, Didn't Want One More Thing That Could Make My Heart Break Into A Million Little Pieces At My Feet.

Friendship Is A Simple Thing, And Yet Complicated; Friendship Is On The Surface, Something Natural, Something Taken For Granted, And Yet Underneath One Could Find Worlds.

Habit Gives Endurance, And Fatigue Is The Best Night Cap.

I Think Life Is Difficult And That's That. I Am Not At All - Absolutely Not At All - Interested In The Pursuit Of Happiness. I Am Not Interested In The Pursuit Of Positivity. I Am Interested In Pursuing A Truth, And The Truth Often Seems To Be Not Happiness But Its Opposite.

Pursuit Of Happiness

The Shadow Of My Mother Danced Around The Room To A Tune That My Own Shadow Sang.

I Swim In A Shaft Of Light, Upside Down, And I Can See Myself Clearly, Through And Through, From Every Angle. Perhaps I Stand On The Brink Of A Great Discovery.

Often The Lines That Define The Traditional European Arrangement Of Fiction, Non-fiction, History, Etc. Are Not Useful. These Lines Can Distort The World We, People Who Look Like Me, Live In - And By The World, I Mean Our Personal Experience Of It.

It Is True That I Am A Writer, And I Was Married To A Composer, And I Have Lived In A Small Village In New England, But My Children Are Not Named Heracles And Persephone, And My Daughter Doesn't Disappear Underground Every Six Months And Emerge In The Spring.

What Distinguished My Life From My Brother's Is That My Mother Didn't Like Me. When I Became A Woman, I Seemed To Repel Her.

The Space Between The Idea Of Something And Its Reality Is Always Wide And Deep And Dark. The Longer They Are Kept Apart—idea Of Thing, Reality Of Thing—the Wider The Width, The Deeper The Depth, The Thicker And Darker The Darkness.

America Is Not So Much A Country As It Is An Idea, And That Must Be Why So Many People Are Drawn To It, The Idea Of It, The Idea That You Might Be Free Of Your Past, Free Of The Traditions That Kept You In Your Own Traditions - That Is The Idea Of It: Freedom From Your Very Own Self.

Life Has A Truth To It, And It's Complicated - It's Love And It's Hatred.

The Garden Has Taught Me To Live, To Appreciate The Times When Things Are Fallow And When They're Not.

It's Too Easy To Say This Or That Is "race," And That Has Been A Vehicle For An Incredible Amount Of Wrong In The World.

Once You Cease To Be A Master, Once You Throw Off Your Master's Yoke, You Are No Longer Human Rubbish, You Are A Human Being, And All The Things That Adds Up To. So, Too, With The Slaves. Once They Are No Longer Slaves, Once They Are Free, They Are No Longer Noble And Exalted; They Are Just Human Beings.

I Like To Be Depressing. I Feel It's My Duty To Make Everyone A Little Less Happy. You Know That Line In The Declaration Of Independence, "the Pursuit Of Happiness"? I've Come To Think That It Has No Meaning At All. You Cannot Pursue Happiness. And To Think That This Bad Little Sentence Has Determined Our Lives.

Pursuit Of Happiness

People Think If You Describe Someone With Glistening Brown Skin You're Writing About Race, As If The Whole Of The African Diaspora Is In Someone's Brown Skin.

But You Know, Where Did The Brontes Go To College? Where Did George Eliot Go To College? Where Did Thomas Paine Or Thomas Jefferson Or George Washington Go? Did George Washington Go To College? This Idea Which We Now Have That People Ought To Have These Credentials Is Really Ridiculous. Where Did Homer Go To College?

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.

I Write Out Of Defiance.

Express Everything You Like. No Word Can Hurt You. None. No Idea Can Hurt You. Not Being Able To Express An Idea Or Word Will Hurt You More. Like A Bullet.

The Past Is A Room Full Of Baggage And Rubbish And Sometimes Things That Are Of Use, But If They Are Of Real Use, I Have Kept Them.

There's Something To Be Said About A Slightly Plump Person—you Have Just Enough Of Too Much.

The Inevitable Is No Less A Shock Just Because It Is Inevitable.

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.

An Ugly Thing, That Is What You Are When You Become A Tourist, An Ugly, Empty Thing, A Stupid Thing, A Piece Of Rubbish Pausing Here And There To Gaze At This And Taste That, And It Will Never Occur To You That The People Who Inhabit The Place In Which You Have Just Paused Cannot Stand You.

I'm Very Aware That We Make These Decisions Toward Love Or Hate Every Day. I Certainly Don't Have The Stamina To Live Through Each Day Making Only The Noblest Decisions.

But Some Natives--most Natives In The World--cannot Go Anywhere. They Are Too Poor. They Are Too Poor To Go Anywhere. They Are Too Poor To Escape The Reality Of Their Lives; And They Are Too Poor To Live Properly In The Place Where They Live, Which Is The Very Place You, The Tourist, Want To Go--so When The Natives See You, The Tourist, They Envy You, They Envy Your Ability To Leave Your Own Banality And Boredom, They Enjoy Your Ability To Turn Their Own Banality And Boredom Into A Source Of Pleasure For Yourself.

I Suppose You Could Say I Love Outlaw American Culture.

American Culture

The Thing To Remember About The Declaration Of Independence And The Profession Of Freedom Is That It Was Written By People Who Were Quite Free And Who Were Surrounded By People Who Were Not Free. The People Who Wrote The Declaration Of Independence Were Ventriloquists Really. The Obsession With Freedom Makes No Sense When It Applies To Them.

I've Written A Book About My Mother, And I Don't Remember Anyone Going To Antigua Or Calling Up My Mother And Verifying Her Life. There Is Something About This Book That Drives People Mad With The Autobiographical Question.

Time Is The Element That Controls The Consciousness, The Very Being Of The People.

At The Time I Was Taught To Read, It Was An Eden-like Time Of My Life. My Mother Adored Me. Everyone Adored Me. So I Associate Reading With Enormous Pleasure.

So Much History, If You Or I Were To Write It, Could Seem A Fiction. These Separations, These Lines That Tell Us This Is Fiction Or Non-fiction, That This Is History Or This Is A Novel, Are Often Useless.

A Great Piece Of Literature Encompasses All That Is And All That Will Be.

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.

In A Way, A Garden Is The Most Useless Of Creations, The Most Slippery Of Creations: It Is Not Like A Painting Or A Piece Of Sculpture-it Won't Accrue Value As Time Goes On. Time Is Its Enemy' Time Passing Is Merely The Countdown For The Parting Between Garden And Gardener.

I Like Melancholy. I Like To Pretend That I'm Alone In The World And I'm Just Sort Of Abandoned.

Race As A Subject Only Comes About Because Of What I Look Like. If I Say Something Truthfully, People Say "oh, She's So Angry." If I Write About A Married Person Who Lives In Vermont, It Becomes "oh, She's Autobiographical."

Who You Are Is A Mystery No One Can Answer, Not Even You.

What I Don't Write Is As Important As What I Write.

I Can Write Anywhere. I Actually Wrote More Than I Ever Did When I Had Small Children. My Children Were Never A Hindrance.

One Of The Things Reading Does, It Makes Your Loneliness Manageable If You Are An Essentially Lonely Person.

"race." I Really Can't Understand It As Anything Other Than Something People Say. The People Who Have Said That You And I Are Both "black" And Therefore Deserve A Certain Kind Of Interaction With The World, They Make Race. I Can't Take Them Seriously.

People Only Say I’m Angry Because I’m Black And I’m A Woman.

The Photograph Of My Brother That Is In This Album Shows A Young Man, Beautiful And Perfect In The Way Of Young People, For Young People Are Always Perfect And Beautiful Until They Are Not, Until The Moment They Just Are Not.

Tomorrow Exists Even Though I May Not Exist In It.

In My Writing I'm Trying To Explore The Violations People Commit Upon Each Other. And The Important Thing Isn't Whether I'm Angry. The More Important Thing Is, Is It True? Do These Things Really Happen?

When I'm Writing, I Think About The Garden, And When I'm In The Garden I Think About Writing. I Do A Lot Of Writing By Putting Something In The Ground.

When I Write A Book, I Hope To Be Beyond Mortal By The Time I'm Finished.

What Frustrates Me Is To See African-americans Behave As Though What European-americans Say Is Worthwhile. It Simply Isn't. It's Just Some Silly People Who Can Make Laws And Have The Power To Enforce Them. I'm Often Amazed At The Conversations Black People Have About Themselves. They Ought To Be Having These Conversations About White People. It's White People Who Are Flawed And At Fault.

I Would Be Lost Without The Feeling Of Antagonism That People Have Towards Me. I Write Out Of Defiance.

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.

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.

Every Time I End A Book, I Look Down At Myself.

I've Never Let The Criticism Deter Me.

When I Start To Write Something, I Suppose I Want It To Change Me, To Make Me Into Something Not Myself.

For Me, Writing Isn't A Way Of Being Public Or Private; It's Just A Way Of Being. The Process Is Always Full Of Pain, But I Like That. It's A Reality, And I Just Accept It As Something Not To Be Avoided. This Is The Life I Have. This Is The Life I Write About.

It Was Hollow, My Triumph, I Could Feel That, But I Held On To It Just The Same.

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.

None Of Us Seem To Think That We Should Draw A Line Under What Would Be A Satisfactory Amount Of Wealth.

There's A Difference Between Bravery And Rash Stupidity.

A Professional Writer Is A Joke. You Write Because You Can't Do Anything Else, And Then You Have Another Job.

The Strange Thing About My Life Is That I Came To America At About The Time When Racial Attitudes Were Changing. This Was A Big Help To Me. Also, The People Who Were Most Cruel To Me When I First Came To America Were Black Americans. They Made Absolute Fun Of The Way I Talked, The Way I Dressed. I Couldn't Dance. The People Who Were Most Kind And Loving To Me Were White People. So What Can One Make Of That? Perhaps It Was A Coincidence That All The People Who Found Me Strange Were Black And All The People Who Didn't Were White.

The Slave Trade Was Globalism. Why People Insist That Globalism, After Its Hideous History, Is A Good Thing, I Do Not Know.

I've Never Gotten Used To Winter And Never Will.

If I Actually Ran The World, I'd Do It From The Kitchen. It's Not Anything Deliberate Or A Statement Or Anything, That's Just How I Understand Things. It's Arranged Along Informal Lines.

I Didn't Know It Was Possible To Be Successful As A Writer, So I Wasn't Afraid To Fail.

When Once I Got To America I Fell In Love With Hippie Culture, And I've Always Wanted To Live In The Country And Grow Organic Vegetables.

I Am Not Aware Of Anything Below My Neck. I Live Completely In My Head.

If You Just Sit There, And You're A Writer, You're Bound To Write Crap. A Lot Of American Writing Is Crap. And A Lot Of American Writers Are Professionals.

He Must Have Smiled At Me, Though I Don't Really Know, But I Don't Like To Think That I Would Love Someone Who Hadn't First Smiled At Me.

I Can't Get Upset About 'offensive To Women' Or 'offensive To Blacks' Or 'offensive To Native Americans' Or 'offensive To Jews' ... Offend! I Can't Get Worked Up About It. Offend!

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