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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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