Jamaica Kincaid

The thing you have always suspected about yourself the minute you become a tourist is true: A tourist is an ugly human being.

Every native would like to find a way out, every native would like a rest, every native would like a tour. 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 envy your ability to turn their own banality and boredom into a source of pleasure for yourself.

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.

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.

Since we were ruled by the English, we also had their laws. There was a law against using abusive language. Can you imagine such a law among people for whom making a spectacle of yourself through speech is everything?

For isn’t it odd that the only language I have in which to speak of this crime is the language of the criminal who committed the crime?

There must have been some good people among you, but they stayed home. And that is the point. That is why they are good. They stayed home.

But let me just tell you something about Ministers of Culture: in places where there is a Minister of Culture it means there is no culture.

But maybe there is no connection between the wonderful life that the Swiss lead and the ill-gotten money that is resting in Swiss bank vaults; maybe it’s just a coincidence.

The people in a small place cannot give an exact account, a complete account, of themselves.