Jackie Kay quotes

When the love of your life dies, the problem is not that some part of you dies too, which it does, but that some part of you is still alive. (Jackie Kay)
I found that being pregnant was different from how I thought it would be...It shares a lot in common with writing in a way. You have an imaginary version of yourself pregnant, and an imaginary baby, an imaginary idea of yourself as a mother... View quote
Jackie Kay
...I like the idea that stories are active, that if you stepped on them they would become alive, like plants, and that the same memory can grow new shoots and flowers, and can change over the course of people's lives... View quote
Jackie Kay
Even though there's a massive amount of people of colour now living in Scotland...this country is 30 or 40 years behind any other English city in terms of racial attitudes and integration. There's no proper acknowledgement of the slave trade and how many Scottish cities were founded on money from that. Our children are just not taught that history. View quote
Jackie Kay
For me it was a lot of fun. It was exciting. There were lots of people who came to stay from different parts of the world. You would come down in the morning and there would be different bodies on the floor or on the sofa. There would be Party socials in the house where people would sing songs and recite poems. It was a very social upbringing... View quote
Jackie Kay
Sometimes you remember your life in photographs that were never taken. View quote
Jackie Kay
Loss isn't an absence after all. It is a presence. A strong presence right next to me. I look at it. It doesn't look like anything, that's what is so strange. It just fits in. View quote
Jackie Kay
How blazing and alive the past is. The color of the wallpaper in the bedroom you had as a girl. It's not so much that you've lost your memory, more like you're submerged in it, like you're living in the brightly vivid underwater world of the past. View quote
Jackie Kay
Nearly dying brings you closer to living. There's a thin border; you feel yourself cross it, going back to the land of the living, going home. Perhaps, if you'd gone the other way, death would have been a different home. View quote
Jackie Kay
These days I can't tell what I really feel. View quote
Jackie Kay