I don’t like to hear people speaking in my work. I like reading it, and I marvel at people who can do it well. And there’s something when you see it … - Jamaica Kincaid

happiness—I have experienced happiness. It was contentment. There was a period in my life when I was very content and looked it. There's something to be said about a slightly plump person—you have just enough of too much.

And so all this fuss over empire—what went wrong here, what went wrong there—always makes me quite crazy, for I can say to them what went wrong: they should never have left their home, their precious England, a place they loved so much, a place they had to leave but could never forget. And so everywhere they went they turned it into England; and everybody they met they turned English. But no place could ever really be England, and nobody who did not look exactly like them would ever be English, so you can imagine the destruction of people and land that came from that. The English hate each other and they hate England, and the reason they are so miserable now is that they have no place else to go and nobody else to feel better than.

I'm always trying to put my own self into words—who am I?