AIDS was something that was put upon us [as haitians], and we were immediately identified with it. That is unfair. That is unjust. I always say, "We are all people living with AIDS." It's not like you can avoid it. It's part of our world.

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.

Life's hard in Haiti right now. And the hardest thing is that the future does not lie with one person.

The Attorney General made another astonishing claim, that there were Pakistani terrorists possibly coming on these boats from Haiti. No one has ever seen a Pakistani coming on a boat from Haiti yet.

We need literature because we wouldn’t fully know ourselves without it. We need good literature to be fully human.

If a woman is worth remembering,' said my grandmother, 'there is no need to have her name carved in letters.

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