Jamaican Quotes & Sayings

When we were in D.C. my daddy used to cut his hair with a bowl. Crucial. If you're African, Haitan, Jamaican or even more poor than the people in the project, you'll know about that. — Wale

I have carried my Jamaican Flag with pride around the world to share my culture and experience with others because I seek Balance which is what I believe life is all about. — Sean Paul

The person who judges you without getting to know you has revealed nothing about you but exposes everything about himself to the world. The prudent one knows that true knowledge is not born out of ignorance but a desire to know before casting judgement. — Crystal Evans

And then the Jamaican guy pulls out the sauce. "It be opening doors to other worlds, mon," he days. We made him do it first, saw that he didn't die. It seemed to make him pretty happy and then - Dave, the guy, I know I didn't really see this, but the guy shrunk himself, made himself three feet tall. We all laughed our asses off, then he was back to normal again.'
And you still tried that shit?'
Are you kidding? How could I not? — David Wong

I can remember the first time I ever recorded my vocals on to a beat. Cat Coore from Third World - a legendary Jamaican band - had a little demo set up at his house. I'm very good friends with his eldest son, Shiah, who plays with me now. So we were rhyming over a track by the dancehall artist Peter Metro. I've still got it somewhere. — Damian Marley

My favorite healthy foods are Jamaican chicken soup, Jamaican chicken stew peas, Jamaican brown stew chicken, plantains and banana chips. — Sanya Richards-Ross

I don't keep women friends for too long largely because i do not trust them and i hate gossip. A lot of times i am on the inside looking out and people say if women are avoiding me then it means something is wrong with me and not with them. I look at these female cliques and the lies, pretense and backbiting that keeps them glued together and decide that i want no part of that. — Crystal Evans

There are so many Jamaican people here in London, it's going to be like being at home for me. — Usain Bolt

To support successful people and others charting the way to higher achievement is to
Pay homage to the dominance of the human spirit. It is believing that we are essentially what we believe ourselves to be. It is knowing that regardless of our circumstances we are all
Striving to be a better version of ourselves. — Crystal Evans

Most of the vegetables in the allotments had died back but one, tended by a Jamaican man, was full of squash. They lay among the dying leaves, rimmed with frost, huge, orange and alien, half hidden by the mist. They reminded her of the fairy stories she'd read as a young child, of white horses and gold carriages that turned into mice and pumpkins on the stroke of midnight. — Sanjida Kay

I was at a family friend's house and in true Jamaican style we celebrated with food. I relived every single emotionit was a moving experience. I am super-happy with all the love and support I am getting from my Jamaicans and Caribbean people. — Tessanne Chin

My favorite runner is Usain Bolt, who happens to be Jamaican and is the fastest man in the world. — Dule Hill

My two Jamaican cousins ... were studying engineering. 'That's where the money is,' Mom advised ... I was to be an engineering major, despite my allergy to science and math ... Those who preceded me at CCNY include the polio vaccine discoverer, Dr. Jonas Salk ... and eight Nobel Prize winners ... In class, I stumbled through math, fumbled through physics, and did reasonably well in, and even enjoyed, geology. All I ever looked forward to was ROTC.
Autobiographical comments on his original reason for going to the City College of New York, where he shortly turned to his military career. — Colin Powell

I was the only black girl at my junior high school. I had an afro, a Jamaican accent, I looked really old. — Grace Jones

Just have coffee with me. With an old friend." He wanted to say no, but the past had too strong a pull. He nodded, afraid to speak. They drove in silence to Starbucks and ordered their complicated coffees from an artist-wannabe barista with more attitude than the guy who works at the local record store. They added whatever condiments at the little stand, playing a game of Twister by reaching across one another for the nonfat milk or Equal. They sat down in metal chairs with too-low backs. The sound system was playing reggae music, a CD entitled Jamaican Me Crazy. Emily — Harlan Coben

It was the vehicle that propelled me to international stardom. ("Harder They Come") I was known as a singer/songwriter before that, but people did not know me as an actor. It showed the world where the music I contributed to create was coming from. It opened the gates for Jamaican music, internationally. — Jimmy Cliff

I wrote a short article called "Yardcore" for that issue, too, as an attempt to talk about the Jamaican influence on garage, grime and dubstep; as a splicing of soundsystem culture and hardcore. — Kode9

In hindsight I can see that my love for the arts began by watching my father and his colleagues perform on stage in Jamaica, and running a muck among the exhibits of fabulous Jamaican art at the National Gallery while mum was upstairs curating. — Michael Hyatt

Know then that every heartbless
given is collected by Jah like mickle and muckle,
or like a basketful of cocoa, and comes back to you
like a dividend. — Kei Miller

Jamaican reggae is the style of music I always reach for when ranting to friends about how you could listen to one style of music exclusively for the rest of your life - and it would all be great and varied and worth hearing. — Jonny Greenwood

Music was always heavily involved with my spirit. My entire family is Jamaican. It's nothing but reggae music and those kinds of vibes. — Shameik Moore

My flow follows sometimes what's going on in the hip-hop industry even though I'm speaking Jamaican patois. — Sean Paul

Back in those early days when I began my apprenticeship as a poet, I also tried to voice our anger, spirit of defiance and resistance in a Jamaican poetic idiom. — Linton Kwesi Johnson

I pulled the Johnny character from the Jamaican Johnny Too Bad thing. — Robert Cray

Basically, as a kid I grew up to a lot of good music, and part of my appreciation for music, from being a small child, was appreciating Jamaican music. — Adrian Young

People love my collard greens. They love my macaroni and cheese. They love the gumbo. They love my Jamaican jerk or my Jamaican curry chicken. They love the jerk, though. And they love my Mexican food. — Tamala Jones

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. — Rachel Manley

For performances I have my favorite go to's like Prince, Donna Summer, Vanity 6, Sheila E, but it also depends on the type of show I am giving. I could pull references from Broadway musicals, Rock Steady Crew, a Jamaican dancehall or gentlemen's club, etc. all within one show. It truly is a playground with no restrictions for me. — Mya

And now this talk of bringing the UN back into the picture.
But that old UN girl - it turns out that she just ain't what she was cracked up to be. She's been demoted (although she retains her high salary). Now she's the world's janitor. She's the Filipino cleaning lady, the Indian jamardini, the postal bride from Thailand, the Mexican household help, the Jamaican au pair. She's employed to clean other people's shit. She's used and abused at will. — Arundhati Roy

Know your load. That's rule numero uno in this business, which is why I make them count the penguins out in front of me one at a time. I'm not going to be the schmuck who shows up in Orlando two
birds short of a dinner party ... I know I'm pulling out of Houston with exactly forty-two Gentoo penguins, seventeen Jamaican land iguanas, four tuataras from New Zealand, and a pair of rare, civet-like mammals called linsangs. No more, no less. — Jacob M. Appel

I think why my content does so well with so many different types of people is because it speaks to everyone. I'll make a Soca music reference, I'll use a Tamil word, I'll do a Jamaican Patois accent. I know about all these people, and I'm not afraid to indulge in their culture. — Lilly Singh

The unluckiest of the Caribbean's sick came, in search of cures: a poor woman who, since childhood, had been counting the beats of her heart so long that she had run out of numbers to count; a Jamaican who, because of the tormenting sound the stars made, never slept; a sleepwalker who rose from bed at night, and in sleep undid all the things he had done in waking; and many other ailments too, less serious in nature. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Let's say you have some chicken stock and you're making soup, and out of everything you can taste, some of the things you put in and some of the things you don't. So you start out with an African spice then you hear some Brazilian music, so then it changes. Then you hear Jamaican and it changes again. And the result depends on how much of each spice you put into it. Now, I've been putting in spices since I started playing professionally in 1945. — Herbie Mann

I would like to work with anyone in the business who wants to give respect back to the Jamaican vibe. — Sean Paul

The authentic Gullah dialect is actually very clipped, and so it would sound almost Jamaican and be very odd to an American audience's ears. It's not the typical Southern dialect that we're used to. — Audra McDonald

There's a glorious sense of freedom in comedy, just allowing myself to tell jokes, allowing myself to interrupt myself and tell old African folk stories that I made up - or didn't - and Jamaican stories. — Neil Gaiman

a hymn then
not to birds but to words
which themselves feel
like feather and wing
and light, as if it were
on the delicacy of
such sweet syllables
that flocks take flight. — Kei Miller

The U.K. is one of the places that has always been an advocate of my music and I spend a lot of time touring here. I've got family and friends over here, but more than that, there's a large Jamaican community and the Jamaican culture is very widespread in the U.K. which I love. — Damian Marley

I live in a neighborhood that's really filled with sound - there's a lot of Jamaican auto body shops, and the guys next door play hip hop. — Sxip Shirey

I got into dub a long time ago. I was into dub before I even had any interest in reggae or Jamaican songs, Bob Marley, or any of those established artists. I just thought it was such an unusual sound. — Bill Laswell

I keep saying that i wish our black women would not stop raising their sons to be like the niggas who left them. I see mothers covering for their deadbeat sons, putting some other child's mother through the same shit, her babyfather put her through.
We have spent the last few decades blaming absentee fathers for the lack of "graces" among our young men forgetting that they are raised by women. Women have always been other women's worst enemies. Maybe we need to start asking our mothers, what have they been doing wrong. Trying to smother the only man who won't leave them cause he can't, hes biologically linked to her. Trying to make up for the men who dumped her.
Raising monstrous, spoiled brats and then unleashing them on the female population. What we have today is a culture of men raised like daughters who do not know how to be a partner, a man and a father. — Crystal Evans

A young man, Jamaican, perhaps, his head circled in a scarf with sunbleached dreadlocks on piled on top, looking like a plate of soft-shell crabs. — Steve Martin

The popular music of Jamaica, the music of the people, is an essentially experiential music, not merely in the sense that the people experience the music, but also in the sense that the music is true to the historical experience, that the music reflects the historical experience. It is the spiritual expression of the historical experience of the Afro-Jamaican. — Linton Kwesi Johnson

Take sleep mark death. — Glen L. Richards

That the language of the poetry of Jamaican music is rastafarian or biblical language cannot simply be put down to the colonizer and his satanic missionaries. The fact is that the historical experience of the black Jamaican is an experience of the most acute human suffering, desolation and despair in the cruel world that is the colonial world ... — Linton Kwesi Johnson

Listening to their argument made me aware of how empty my life was, and I hated the life I was living all the more. It was quite obvious to me this lady was deeply in love, for she was fighting for what she thought to be hers. Even though I was dating two females at the time, and stringing a third one along, yet I've yet to discover that kind of love. I guess this was why my favorite song was 'I wane be love', by the Jamaican reggae super star Buru Banton. — Drexel Deal

What undercuts the power of women's anger in the end is not the melancholy that Butler charts, but material realities - economics, not psychology. While Em fantasizes about the possibility of Afro- and Euro-Jamaican women building partnerships to work for each other, she seems to understand that she has no concrete possibilities for realizing this fantasy in 1920s Jamaica. — Omise'eke Natasha Tinsley

Somebody should clip Sting around the head and tell him to stop using that ridiculous Jamaican accent. — Elvis Costello

What's with the shorts?" "There's a new fitness trainer. Jamaican gal . . . tall, gorgeous." "And . . . ?" "Bike shorts show off my package." "Jesus Christ." "Jealousy is an ugly thing, Joe." "Get in the fucking car. — Jonathan Maberry

I used to watch my grandmother make fancy, Julia Child-style beef bourguignon. And growing up in New York City, I was exposed to many cultures. I experimented with Puerto Rican and Jamaican food. — Debi Mazar

I'm Jamaican, man. I'm Jamaican first. You gotta understand that's where I'm from. That's home. That you can never take away from me. I'm a Jamaican-born Canadian sprinter. — Donovan Bailey

If it no go so, it go near so. - Jamaican proverb — Marlon James

I wanna open a Jamaican/Irish/Spanish small plate breakfast restaurant and call it Tapas the Morning to Ja. — Harris Wittels

I read so much stuff that black women say, especially about my relationship. 'Oh, he left his black wife to go be with some exotic chick.' First of all, my girl is black: she's Jamaican. — Kevin Hart

You see a nigga won't give a good girl shit yet he will spend his last dime trying to make a bad girl his bitch. He will go broke trying to trap some whore into a monogamous relationship — Crystal Evans

My formative years, until I was 12, was all shaped by Jamaican culture, by that economy, by the people in my family, who are agriculturalists, who were plantation workers, who harvested those crops and took them down to the boats run by the United Food Company, to load those ships at night, hence all the songs that I sing that come from that environment. — Harry Belafonte

Don't turn a good dude who is loyal to his chick into a bad nigga by throwing yourself at him when he is already committed. Know when to stay the hell away.Good men are rare. If he aint single, don't make him unfaithful. Oh Yes, he might cheat with some other chick. It does not have to be you. — Crystal Evans

I'm an artist. And I'm happy that I was there at the commencement of this music, this Jamaican music, to put my contribution and help to establish it. — Jimmy Cliff

I eyed him. "Are you really Jamaican?"
He returned my gaze evenly. "Why do you think I'm not, sistah?"
"I don't know," I said. "I have to admit, pretty much everything I know about Jamaica comes from watching Cool Runnings, and I'm guessing a Disney movie about Olympic bobsledders isn't the most accurate reference material. — Jacqueline Carey

I was a reader before I was a writer, and when I started putting together my first collection of short stories, Fairytales For Lost Children, I drew on my rich history as a reader to try and create my voice. I wanted this voice to reflect my Somali background, my Kenyan upbringing and my London home. This voice would be a mashup of all the elements that formed my youth; the sticky-sweet Jamaican patois, the Kenyan street slang, my Somali and Italian linguistic tics, my love of jazz poetics and nineties hip-hop slanguistics. This language would form the bed on which my narratives of love, loss, identity and hope would rest. — Diriye Osman

To be completely honest about your flaws is the only liberation from feelings of inferiority, inadequacy and external manipulation. Your happiness is only a change of conviction away. — Crystal Evans

I've never hidden the fact that I'm Jamaican; I will never disown my roots or influences. — OMI

[I like to cook] Shepherd's pie, which is a classic British dish. But my version reflects my Jamaican roots, because I add jerk to it as well. — Naomie Harris

The difference between you and I Dre is that i can take a bad experience and make money off it, You just have to live with yours until time blurs your memory of the details.
Most writers i know aren't beautiful by society's standard. Writing is not modelling but Writer's do have beautiful souls. — Crystal Evans

The people who don't give you a standing ovation for the hurdles you cross are just afraid that you might win the race. They do not cheer you but they sit, lurking on the sidelines, biting their fingernails hoping you will stumble before the end. They secretly wish you will never win this race. But watch out for them, they will be the firstto stand and cheer you when you stand on that podium of success. — Crystal Evans

Dear Non-American Black, when you make the choice to come to America, you become black. Stop arguing. Stop saying I'm Jamaican or I'm Ghanaian. America doesn't care. — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

My dream of happiness: a quiet spot by the Jamaican seashore ... hearing the wind sob with the beauty and the tragedy of everything. Sitting under an almond tree, with the leaf spread over me like an umbrella. — Errol Flynn

Part of the desire to see each other succeed is to stop putting a price on success. — Crystal Evans

I didn't think I had a voice at all, and I still think of myself as an interpreter of songs more than a singer. I thought it was too deep; people thought I was a man. I had a very strong Jamaican accent, too; the accent really messed me up for auditions. — Grace Jones

As the days went by, my frustration festered like an outhouse during a Jamaican summer. — Andrew Cormier

My dad knows every single accent from being an old Yiddish grandpa to being Indian or Jamaican. It was very cool to grow up with that. — Ashley Bell

Let's go to that Jamaican place around the corner from you."
"Cluck You Chicken? Are you serious? The health department probably uses that restaurant for training exercises. — Mary Ann Rivers

We lived in a one-bedroom apartment in Northwest D.C. I was essentially raised by a Panamanian man and a Jamaican woman. That's why I have such a fascination with Jamaican food. — Wale

[My mother is] a half-Chinese, half-Jamaican woman, who grew up the ninth of nine kids, getting a law degree from Harvard. Academically brilliant, but also incredibly strong-willed and ethical. My mother was like that, my sister is, and my wife is too. — Harry Connick Jr.

It may be the optimist in me, but I think America has a uniquely powerful and capacious glue internally. The American identity has always been ethnically and religiously neutral, so within one generation you have Italian-Americans, Irish-Americans, Chinese-Americans, Jamaican-Americans - they feel American. It's a huge success story. — Amy Chua

My favorite herb - lamb's bread. Kali. I like Hawaiian. But for some reason, you communicate better with Jamaican herb. The best Jamaican herb, it have more energy, more everything to it. — Bob Marley

Those who are coming from the gutters know that from time to time a piece of us will break off and float back to the floor from whence it came. Wealth can gray your eyes at the edges, money does not make you hover above human qualities, you are only a flawed being with much material gain. — Crystal Evans

To me, our music is like Jamaican stuff - if they can't hear it, they're not supposed to hear it. It's not for them if they can't understand it. — Joe Strummer

You have to be careful what you write and not allow self righteousness to cloud your ability to be objective. This story is not about you, it's about people and things that no one else sees. The truth will at times come to you in a blur, unclear, unsettling refusing to leave until you figure out its relevance. — Crystal Evans

When I lived in the U.K., I recorded a lot of ska and rock-steady styles of Jamaican music. But people there weren't accepting it. So I began using a faster reggae beat. — Jimmy Cliff

Jamaican music can be aggressive, soulful, smooth and exciting all at once - just like hip-hop. At the same time, there's nothing like Jamaica in the United States. Jamaica is its own thing. — Nas

I write songs on a universal basis. I was born out of the earth of Jamaica which I consider to be a part of Atlantis, the sunk continent, but that's my thing. But I write songs on a universal basis, not like Jamaican songs. — Jimmy Cliff

My dad is Greek and my mum Jamaican. My grandparents brought me up for most of my childhood, but I saw my mum and dad all the time. — Lianne La Havas

Some relationships are like glass its better to leave them broken than to hurt yourself trying to put the pieces back together again.
When you start reading the Bunna Man, most of my readers hate Dre and then they realize that Dre doesn't really have any power. The only power he has is the one Saf gave him. What happens now is that by you reach the middle of the story, your anger turns from Dre to Saf cause you realize that Saf is the catalyst behind her own misery. If she'd leave Dre alone. Her suffering would end — Crystal Evans

Dear Non-Black American,
when you comes to the United States, you become black.No matter of your origin. Stop saying you are Liberian, Jamaican, Belizean, Nigerian,
South African or Ghanaian. White America doesn't care about all that bull, that's why on the work application it doesn't give you the option to say Ghanaian or Jamaican, it says "African American. — Henry Johnson Jr

Under the twinkling trees was a table covered with Guatemalan fabric, roses in juice jars, wax rose candles from Tijuana and plates of food - Weetzie's Vegetable Love-Rice, My Secret Agent Lover Man's guacamole, Dirk's homemade pizza, Duck's fig and berry salad and Surfer Surprise Protein Punch, Brandy-Lynn's pink macaroni, Coyote's cornmeal cakes, Ping's mushu plum crepes and Valentine's Jamaican plantain pie. Witch Baby's stomach growled but she didn't leave her hiding place. Instead, she listened to the reggae, surf, soul and salsa, tugged at the snarl balls in her hair and snapped pictures of all the couples. — Francesca Lia Block

I do have very solid reggae roots based on the fact that I'm Jamaican, and so that is a part of myself; even if I never do all reggae, it has to come out in some way because that's who I am. — Tessanne Chin