Edwidge Danticat Thinking Quotations

I very much love a physical book myself. I think people who have had this experience of also seeing a book come together, from sitting down and writing the first word, to holding the binding in your hand, we have a deeper sentimental attachment to it than others might.

We've had fiction from the time of cave drawings. I think fiction, storytelling, and narrative in general will always exist in some form.

I think we all wear some kind of mask. There are masks that shield us from others, but there are masks that embolden us, and you see that in carnival. The shiest child puts on a mask and can do anything and be anybody.

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

Even when I think of writing fiction, it's being kind of a liar, a storyteller, a weaver, and there's that sense of how much of this is your life. The story is a way you unravel your life from behind a mask.

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.

People think that there is a country there that these people are only around when they are on CNN. I don't think that's limited to Haiti.

I think Haiti is a place that suffers so much from neglect that people only want to hear about it when it’s at its extreme. And that’s what they end up knowing about it.

I think novels just really show us the deepest parts of people's hearts, and you cannot walk away anymore and say, "I don't know."

When people think about this religion, they'll say "voodoo" this and "voodoo" that in the way the Hollywood movies show it: the sticking of pins in dolls. It's very different than Vodou - which is a religion that comes to Haiti from our ancestors in Africa. I want to differentiate it from the stereotypical, sensationalized view that we see of the religion.

I think it is important to reach people through arts and literature, because then you establish a connection that's not an instant crisis.

It's hard to tell what people will do with the word and how they'll be circulating it but I think the storytellers and the stories themselves will always be there.

I think it's hard for an outsider to capture the flavor of a community and all its nuances, so ultimately Haitian-Americans need to start sharing intimate accounts of their stories.