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

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

To me, there is nothing more soothing than the song of a mosquito that cant get through the mesh to bite you.

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.

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.

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.

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