To start with, for example this year, 2004, is the bicentennial of Haitian independence.

All anyone can hope for is just a tiny bit of love, like a drop in a cup if you can get it, or a waterfall, a flood, if you can get that too.

Love is like the rain. It comes in a drizzle sometimes. Then it starts pouring and if you're not careful it will drown you.

Create dangerously, for people who read dangerously. ... Writing, knowing in part that no matter how trivial your words may seem, someday, somewhere, someone may risk his or her life to read them.

There is a frustration too, that at moments when there's not a coup, when there are not people in the streets, that the country disappears from people's consciousness.

When you write ,it's like braiding your hair. Taking a handful of coarse unruly strands and attempting to bring then unity.

It's not easy to start over in a new place,' he said. 'Exile is not for everyone. Someone has to stay behind, to receive the letters and greet family members when they come back.

People are just too hopeful, and sometimes hope is the biggest weapon of all to use against us. People will believe anything.

I think Haiti is a place that suffers so much from neglect that people only want to hear about it when it’s at its extreme. And that’s what they end up knowing about it.

Toni Cade Bambara said: “Writing is the way I participate in the struggle.”

Misery won't touch you gentle. It always leaves its thumbprints on you; sometimes it leaves them for others to see, sometimes for nobody but you to know of.

If you don't believe in yourself, How can you ever believe in another?

The least effort is the feat most likely to be accomplished.

The importance of gratitude is never forgotten.

Radiate boundless love towards the entire world - above, below, and across - unhindered, without ill will, without enmity.

I don't believe all this nonsense about market timing. Just buy good value and when the market is ready that value will be recognized.

Discipline has within it the potential for creating future miracles.

I have been surfing for my whole life. I love it and I don't know that I can get much better now, I have peaked, which bothers me but I have to accept it.

Special mercy arouses more gratitude than universal mercy.

I sit before flowers 
hoping they will train me in the art 
of opening up