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

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

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.

Love is like the rain. It comes in a drizzle sometimes. Then it starts pouring and if you're not careful it will drown you.

We've had fiction from the time of cave drawings. I think fiction, storytelling, and narrative in general will always exist in some form.

The greatest gift anyone can give to a writer is time.

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.