Jamaica Quotes

“Last time I was in Jamaica I financed a teacher to teach in an orphanage.”

“In late 1949, at two and a half years old, I arrived in Jamaica for the first time. I had crossed the Atlantic by air from England. My Jamaican father was studying in London, my European mother was sick, and so in true Jamaican style I was sent home to my grandparents.”

“I go back five generations in Jamaica. My dad grew up in Port Royal, and my mom grew up in Kingston. My family is from the country like West Moreland and also in Manchester. I've been there countless times. As far as cuisine, there's not really much that comes out of Jamaica that's on a plate that I don't like.”

“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 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.”

“I grew up in this poor place, with very limited circumstances, at about 16 years of age was sent by my family to work, and instead of remaining in the position into which I was sent, I somehow worked my way out of it without any help from anyone, just luck.”

“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.”

“When I looked at them sitting around me, the church in the distance, beyond that our school, with throngs of girls crossing back and forth in the schoolyard, beyond that the world, how I wished that everything would fall away, so that suddenly we'd be sitting in some different atmosphere, with no future full of ridiculous demands, no need for any sustenance save our love for each other, with no hindrance to any of our desires, which would, of course, be simple desires — nothing, nothing, just sitting on our tombstones forever.”

“I understood finding the place you are born in an unbearable prison and wanting something completely different from what you are familiar with, knowing it represents a haven.”