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

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.

There is a frustration too, that at moments when there's not a coup, when there are not people in the streets, that the country disappears from people's consciousness.

Someone has said that nations have interests, they don't have friends, and you see that over and over in U.S. policy.

In the 1980s, when people were just beginning to talk about AIDS, there were just a few categories of those who were at high risk: homosexuals, hemophiliacs, heroin addicts, and Haitians. We were the only ones identified by nationality.

To start with, for example this year, 2004, is the bicentennial of Haitian independence.

Once you're involved in the work, it's really just you and the characters and the words.