The more practice you have, the less stressful writing is.

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.

Life was neither something you defended by hiding nor surrendered calmly on other people's terms, but something you lived bravely, out in the open, and that if you had to lose it, you should lose it on your own terms.

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

There [Haiti] were also leaders like Jean-Jacques Dessalines, whose motto was, "Cut their heads off, burn their houses."

It's interesting to see people overcome things. Because if you didn't overcome, you wouldn't be writing it.

Here, though, there is nothing. Nothing at all. The sky seems empty even when I am looking at the moon and stars.