When people think about this religion, they'll say "voodoo" this and "voodoo" that in the way the Hollywood movies show it: the sticking of pins in dolls. It's very different than Vodou - which is a religion that comes to Haiti from our ancestors in Africa. I want to differentiate it from the stereotypical, sensationalized view that we see of the religion.

We still have our people working in the cane fields in the Dominican Republic. People are still repatriated all the time from the Dominican Republic to Haiti. Some tell of being taken off buses because they looked Haitian, and their families have been in the Dominican Republic for generations. Haitian children born in the Dominican Republic still can't go to school and are forced to work in the sugarcane fields.

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.

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.

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.

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

Pretend that this is a time of miracles and we believe in them.