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

I don't know what will happen to the physical book and what it will mean for authors. I worry whether it will mean people can still make their careers this way. Will whatever comes next allow people to be able to own their ideas and be able to take time to develop them?

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

After the Dance was my first attempt at nonfiction. I'd never really participated in carnival, and I really wanted to go. It sounded like a wonderfully fun thing to do. And I wanted to write something happy about Haiti, something celebratory. And going to carnival gave me a chance to do that, because it is one of the instances in Haiti when people shed their class separation and come together.

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

People think that there is a country there that these people are only around when they are on CNN. I don't think that's limited to Haiti.

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.