There is always a place where, if you listen closely in the night, you will hear a mother telling a story and at the end of the tale, she will ask you this question: 'Ou libéré?' Are you free, my daughter?" My grandmother quickly pressed her fingers over my lips. Now," she said, "you will know how to answer.

Anger is a wasted emotion.

That has always been a strength of Haiti: Beyond crisis, it has beautiful art; it has beautiful music. But people have not heard about those as much as they heard about the coups and so forth. I always hope that the people who read me will want to learn more about Haiti.

This was a "bad" example for U.S. slaves. Haiti was subjected to an embargo from the United States, which, along with many other countries, refused to recognize this new republic.

In Haiti you had the Duvaliers for 29 years and they were very well supported by the United States.

To be able to create you have to have peace of mind on some level.

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.