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.

The justification - the idea that we have a right to invade another country and determine another people's destiny - is frightening. And I fear really for the future of that occupation. What happens now, and twenty years from now, and forty years from now, given our case? People in the United States may feel like when we don't see it on CNN twenty-four hours a day, it sort of disappears. But it doesn't disappear for the people who have to live under occupation - and their children and their children's children.

And the fact that Haiti was occupied for 19 years by the United States, from 1915 to 1934.

For the majority of the people it is a difficult place to live. That's a reality that we can't ignore. But there is also great beauty to it.

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 think it is important to reach people through arts and literature, because then you establish a connection that's not an instant crisis.

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.