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.

When you write ,it's like braiding your hair. Taking a handful of coarse unruly strands and attempting to bring then unity.

After writing fiction for so long, I like the discovery element of nonfiction, in the sense that when you find the right information, it feels like gold.

I come from a place where breath, eyes, and memory are one, a place from which you carry your past like a hair on your head. Where women return to their children as butterflies or as tears in the eyes of the statues that their daughters pray to

I think novels just really show us the deepest parts of people's hearts, and you cannot walk away anymore and say, "I don't know."

I am very timid about speaking for the collective. I can say what I see, I can say what I've heard, I can say what I feel, but I can't speak for - no one can speak for - 10 million people, and it takes away something from them if you make yourself their voice.

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