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.

After writing fiction for so long, I like the discovery element of nonfiction, in the sense that when you find the right information, it feels like gold.

That experience of touching down in a totally foreign place is like having a blank canvas: You begin with nothing, but stroke by stroke you build a life. This process requires everything great art requires-risk-tasking, hope, a great deal of imagination, all the qualities that are the building blocks of art. You must be able to dream something nearly impossible and toil to bring it into existence.

I'm just melancholy by nature, and a lot of that gets into my writing.

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.

Wonderful thing about novels is that sometimes we read a novel and we know the person in the novel more than we know people in our own lives.

The way the media cycle works, the way the news works, and the way people's attention span works, is that we only learn that people exist when there is crisis.