Edwidge Danticat Quotes

I was neither doing these people nor myself a favor by showing up when my heart wasn't in it. There were not getting the real me, the whole me, the true me.

More and more people are able to access information - thank goodness we have the Internet and if you are interested you can find things. Which is different than even 20 years ago.

Especially moments when things are very difficult and complicated for me and I am still trying to grasp what is happening and I am still trying to understand and to reach family back home.

That's whatever news topic, whatever political process any country is going through - whenever they are in the news, that's when they exist. If you don't see them they don't exist.

Here, though, there is nothing. Nothing at all. The sky seems empty even when I am looking at the moon and stars.

This was a "bad" example for U.S. slaves. Haiti was subjected to an embargo from the United States, which, along with many other countries, refused to recognize this new republic.

People aren't really aware of what's happening in other places.

If a woman is worth remembering,' said my grandmother, 'there is no need to have her name carved in letters.

No one will love you more than you love your pain.

I was able to not fold and go in a corner because I had my writing as therapy, but also as my tool for struggle.

I'm happy to be part of this chorus of people who are trying to tell more complex stories about Haiti.

Once you're involved in the work, it's really just you and the characters and the words.

There is something human about the way people react to and identify with suffering. There's a lot more empathy in the world than we perhaps realize.

There [Haiti] were also leaders like Jean-Jacques Dessalines, whose motto was, "Cut their heads off, burn their houses."

I'm not saying Cubans don't deserve asylum, but if it is a national security issue, there are people who are coming from Cuba on hijacked airplanes. Why isn't that a national security issue?

People often think of Haiti as a place where you're not supposed to have any joy. I wanted to show that this is a place with joy.

When I meet people for the first time, I always put on my glasses because I feel like that's a little something extra between me and them. It's like the Laurence Dunbar poem "We Wear the Mask."

Vodou is one of the religions practiced in Haiti, a rich religion for the people.

We live now in a global culture where anything that happens in a place that's 90 minutes from your shores really affects you.

After writing fiction for so long, I like the discovery element of nonfiction, in the sense that when you find the right information, it feels like gold.

I think it's hard to write a book about happiness because fiction requires tension and complication.

The greatest gift anyone can give to a writer is time.

I love the process of cracking the spine for the first time and slowly sinking into a book. That will soon seem old-fashioned, I'm sure, like the time of illuminated manuscripts.

You may be surprised what we use our dreams to do, how we drape them over our sight and carry them like amulets to protect us from evil spells.

I want to figure out how people can go on with their lives when mine has changed so much. I want to relearn how to breathe without carrying this big, empty cave inside me.

Perhaps there had been joy for them in finding that sugar could be made from blood.

The women in your family have never lost touch with one another. Death is a path we take to meet on the other side.