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.
Interpretation
This quote reflects the importance of mutual affection and warmth in love.
In this quote, Jamaica Kincaid expresses the idea that love begins with a shared connection, symbolized by the act of smiling. The speaker suggests that a smile signifies a welcoming gesture, and it would be difficult to develop feelings for someone who doesn't reciprocate that initial warmth, illustrating the fundamental human desire for reciprocal affection in relationships.
In practice
During a romantic dinner, you could use this quote to express the significance of mutual attraction.
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'.
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 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.
I have no credentials. I have no money. I literally come from a poor place. I was a servant. I dropped out of college. The next thing you know I'm writing for the 'New Yorker,' I have this sort of life, and it must seem annoying to people.
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.
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.
But till we are built like angels, with hammer and chisel and pen, we will work for ourself and a woman, forever and ever, Amen.
God's love is too great to be confined to any one side of a conflict or to any one religion.
I wept in my dreams. I dreamed you lay in the grave; I awoke, and the tears still poured down my cheeks. I wept in my dreams, I dreamed you had left me; I awoke and I went on weeping long and bitterly. I wept in my dreams, I dreamed you were still kind to me; I awoke, and still the flow of my tears streams on.
There's nothing wrong with being gay, so to deny it is to make a judgment.
No love is Love that subjugates the Lover. No love is Love that feeds on flesh and blood. No love is Love that draws a woman to a man only to breed more women and men and thus perpetuate their bondage to the flesh.
Ah... romance to me is spontaneity. It's not diamond earrings; it's a bunch of daffodils that's freshly picked from the field.
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