Jeremy Popkin's collection of first-person narratives of the Haitian Revolution is an extremely valuable work, accessible, sound and intelligent. I only wish such a book had been available fifteen years ago when I was in the early stages of researching my series of novels. Popkin has been deft and tactful in stitching together these excerpts, and as a result, he manages to tell a complete version of the Revolution almost entirely in the words of the people who experienced it-this book engaged me deeply.

I have always had a mystical attitude toward inspiration. Thats my nature.

In For Whom the Bell Tolls, Hemingway cozies up to revolution by romanticizing it (and not only with those execrable love scenes).

Sometimes you don't get but one mistake, if the one you pick is bad enough.

Imaginative writing has always been a solitary and indeed a somewhat antisocial activity. Apprenticeship existed, no doubt, but it was an apprenticeship to books and not to living masters of the craft.

Since the 1960s, exile for Haitians is a condition that ends only to begin again.

I dont call myself a very good Christian, but I think I know one when I see one, and I also think I know when I dont.