Edwidge Danticat Quotes - Page 3

The past is like the hair on our head. I moved to New York when I was twelve, but you always have this feeling that wherever you come from, you physically leave it, but it doesn't leave you.

I think it's hard to write a book about happiness because fiction requires tension and complication.

Often when you're an immigrant writing in English, people think it's primarily a commercial choice. But for many of us, it's a choice that rises out of the circumstances of our lives. These are the tools I have at my disposal, based on my experiences. It's a constant debate, not just in my community but in other communities as well. Where do you belong? You're kind of one of us, but you now write in a different language.

We all have a tendency to over generalize our individual experiences. After I've published something, I'll meet someone who says, "I'm Haitian, and I don't know this, so it must not be true." Even if we're talking about a work of fiction. I've gotten very angry myself reading many things about Haiti. We're not a monolithic group; no group is. Also, it's important to keep in mind the genre in which we are writing. Fiction is full of invented stories about exceptional people in exceptional situations. Those situations are not always cheery or celebratory.

One of the things that sparked my interest in this is the case of Emmanuel Constant, who started a militia called FRAPH that was backed by the CIA. FRAPH killed thousands of Haitians in the early 1990s. Now while Constant is living comfortably in Queens, other Haitians are being deported. I wanted to see how those who have been bruised by people like that deal with coming face to face with their torturers.

If a woman is worth remembering,' said my grandmother, 'there is no need to have her name carved in letters.

On some levels, you can also have this feeling that we are being duped, somehow. And that the world is at play for something you would understand more if it were pure ideology. It is a very strange time and also basic things are being taken away.

The more practice you have, the less stressful writing is.

Wonderful thing about novels is that sometimes we read a novel and we know the person in the novel more than we know people in our own lives.

People often think of Haiti as a place where you're not supposed to have any joy. I wanted to show that this is a place with joy.

I think all artists are looking for a subject or are sometimes unsure of their subject, but immigrant artists bring another culture to that and they bring also the place where the original culture meets the new culture.

It's interesting to see people overcome things. Because if you didn't overcome, you wouldn't be writing it.

We try to keep the beautiful memories, but other things from the past creep up on us.

You learned in school that you have pencils and paper only because the trees gave themselves in unconditional sacrifice.

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

That has always been a strength of Haiti: Beyond crisis, it has beautiful art; it has beautiful music. But people have not heard about those as much as they heard about the coups and so forth. I always hope that the people who read me will want to learn more about Haiti.

I can't wait for both my daughters to be old enough to read all my books. I loved it every time I saw my parents acting like more than just my parents. And I'm looking forward to that with my daughters too. I am looking forward to having them discover me as someone completely other than their mother.

Sometimes family members will ask to be kept out of certain things that I'm writing, and I try to respect that. I'd much rather have relatives than a book.

Someone has said that nations have interests, they don't have friends, and you see that over and over in U.S. policy.

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

Language is such a powerful thing. After the earthquake, I went to Haiti and people were talking about how [they] described this feeling of going through an earthquake. People really didn't have the vocabulary - before we had hurricanes. I'd talk with people and they'd say, "We have to name it; it has to have a name."

I hope to be a good role model for my daughters.

Creating these messes that go from administration to administration and then you swoop in and clean them up - with that heroic Delta force - people not realizing that they were always there but doing different things than what we see them doing at the moment.

Being a shy child, I always longed for a mask. Even in my adult life, I have glasses, they are my mask.

That experience of touching down in a totally foreign place is like having a blank canvas: You begin with nothing, but stroke by stroke you build a life. This process requires everything great art requires-risk-tasking, hope, a great deal of imagination, all the qualities that are the building blocks of art. You must be able to dream something nearly impossible and toil to bring it into existence.