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.

Salt is a powerful symbol in Haiti, as elsewhere. Salt of the earth, for example is an American phrase. In Haiti, myth and legend has it that if you are turned into a zombie, if someone gives you a taste of salt, then you can come back to life. And in the life of the fishermen, there are so many little things about salt that I wanted to incorporate. The salt in the air. The crackling of salt in the fire. There's all this damage, this peeling of the fishing boats from the sea salt. But there is also healing from it, sea baths that are supposed to heal all kinds of aches and wounds.

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.

We've had fiction from the time of cave drawings. I think fiction, storytelling, and narrative in general will always exist in some form.

The best moment in writing any book is when you just can't wait to get back to the writing, when you can't wait to re-enter that fictional place, when your fictional town feels even more real than the town where you actually live.

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.

We need literature because we wouldn’t fully know ourselves without it. We need good literature to be fully human.