People often think of Haiti as a place where you're not supposed to have any joy. I wanted to show that this is a place with joy.

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

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

The girl she said, I didn’t tell you this because it was a small thing, but little girls, they leave their hearts at home when they walk outside. Hearts are so precious. They don’t want to lose them.

Art is a luxury but also a necessity.

There is something human about the way people react to and identify with suffering. There's a lot more empathy in the world than we perhaps realize.

The whole history between Haiti and the Dominican Republic is complicated. We share the island of Hispaniola, and Haiti occupied the Dominican Republic for twenty-two years after 1804 for fear that the French and Spanish would come back and reinstitute slavery. So we have this unique situation of being two independent nations on the same island, but with each community having its own grievance.