My models were oral, were storytellers. Like my grandmothers and my aunts. It's true, a lot of people in my life were not literate in a formal sense, but they were storytellers. So I had this experience of just watching somebody spin a tale off the top of her head. I loved that.

Whole interaction between the storyteller and the listeners had a very powerful influence on me.

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.

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

You have all these people in the city and everything has become centralized. If you live outside the city and you need a birth certificate or some official paper from the government, you have to travel to the city.

And the fact that Haiti was occupied for 19 years by the United States, from 1915 to 1934.

They say behind mountains are more mountains.