This is a place where grandmothers hold babies on their laps under the stars and whisper in their ears that the lights in the sky are holes in the floor of heaven.

You do not hate the time you waste; it evokes a much more passive emotion than that. You only wish you had it back, like a quarter in an unlucky slot machine.

This is home and home is not something you remember, it is something you see every day and every moment.

The Haitians, who knew something about suffering and survival, had a beautiful phrase... The Translation is not perfect, but the nut of it was: 'The season of pain is never over until the sky begins to cry.

I don't think there's a difference between writing for a newspaper or magazine and doing a chapter in a book.

I have dictated stories from an airport after writing the story out in longhand on the plane that I got from phone interviews and then was applauded by editors for 'working magic.

The best writers who have put pen to paper have often had a journalism background.