“ No, women like you don't write. They carve onion sculptures and potato statues. They sit in dark corners and braid their hair in new shapes and twists in order to control the stiffness, the unruliness… Edwidge Danticat
“ To start with, for example this year, 2004, is the bicentennial of Haitian independence. Edwidge Danticat
“ I want to figure out how people can go on with their lives when mine has changed so much. I want to relearn how to breathe without carrying this big, empty cave inside me. Edwidge Danticat
“ I began my effort at improving my flight experiences by reading purposefully during my flights. My airplane reading would often be centered on themes. On some flights I would read only newspapers and… Edwidge Danticat
“ You have all these people in the city and everything has become centralized. If you live outside the city and you need a birth certificate or some official paper from the government, you have to trave… Edwidge Danticat
“ I wanted to raise the voice of a lot of the people that I knew growing up, and this was, for the most part, poor people who had extraordinary dreams but also very amazing obstacles. Edwidge Danticat
“ You may be surprised what we use our dreams to do, how we drape them over our sight and carry them like amulets to protect us from evil spells. Edwidge Danticat
“ We tell ourselves stories in order to live, the novelist and essayist Joan Didion famously wrote. We also tell ourselves stories in order not to die. Edwidge Danticat
“ This is where these writers placed their bets, striking a dangerous balance between silence and art. How do writers and readers find each other under such dangerous circumstances? Reading, like writin… Edwidge Danticat
“ When you write, it’s like braiding your hair. Taking a handful of coarse unruly strands and attempting to bring them unity. Your fingers have still not perfected the task. Some of the braids are long,… Edwidge Danticat
“ I once heard an elder say that the dead who have no use for their words leave them as part of their children's inheritance. Proverbs, teeth suckings, obscenities, even grunts and moans once inserted i… Edwidge Danticat
“ The immigrant artist shares with all other artists the desire to interpret and possibly remake his or her own world. So though we may not be creating as dangerously as our forebears—though we are not… Edwidge Danticat
“ Those who die young, they are cheated,” she said. “Not cheated out of life, because life is a penance, but the young, they’re cheated because they don’t know it’s coming. They don’t have time to move… Edwidge Danticat
“ These were our bedtime stories. Tales that haunted our parents and made them laugh at the same time. We never understood them until we were fully grown and they became our sole inheritance. Edwidge Danticat
“ There is always a place where, if you listen closely in the night, you will hear a mother telling a story and at the end of the tale, she will ask you this question: 'Ou libéré?' Are you free, my daug… Edwidge Danticat
“ Perhaps there had been joy for them in finding that sugar could be made from blood. Edwidge Danticat
“ They are the people of creation. Their maker…gives them the sky to carry because they are so strong. These people do not know who they are, but if you see a lot of trouble in your life, it is because… Edwidge Danticat
“ The women in your family have never lost touch with one another. Death is a path we take to meet on the other side. Edwidge Danticat
“ Old age is not meant to be survived alone," Man Rapadou said, her voice trailing with her own hidden thoughts. "Death should come gently, slowly, like a man's hand approaching your body. There can be… Edwidge Danticat
