People aren't really aware of what's happening in other places.

Even when I think of writing fiction, it's being kind of a liar, a storyteller, a weaver, and there's that sense of how much of this is your life. The story is a way you unravel your life from behind a mask.

I would hate for people to generalize about every Haitian from something that one Haitian did, or a group of Haitians did.

There is this split between the Haiti of before the earthquake and the Haiti of after the earthquake. So when I'm writing anything set in Haiti now, whether fiction or nonfiction, always in the back of my mind is how people, including some of my own family members, have been affected not just by history and by the present but also by the earthquake.

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.

They say behind mountains are more mountains.

In Haiti you had the Duvaliers for 29 years and they were very well supported by the United States.