Quote

When you write ,it's like braiding your hair. Taking a handful of coarse unruly strands and attempting to bring then unity.

Edwidge Danticat

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Edwidge Danticat
Age: 55
Born: 1969
Born: January 19
Author
Novelist
Writer
Port au Prince
Handful
Unity
Taking
Hair
Diction
Bring
Unruly
Write
Coarse
Writing
Strands
Like
Attempting

More quotes by Edwidge Danticat

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After writing fiction for so long, I like the discovery element of nonfiction, in the sense that when you find the right information, it feels like gold.
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The way the media cycle works, the way the news works, and the way people's attention span works, is that we only learn that people exist when there is crisis.
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Whole interaction between the storyteller and the listeners had a very powerful influence on me.
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I come from a place where breath, eyes, and memory are one, a place from which you carry your past like a hair on your head. Where women return to their children as butterflies or as tears in the eyes of the statues that their daughters pray to
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In the 1980s, when people were just beginning to talk about AIDS, there were just a few categories of those who were at high risk: homosexuals, hemophiliacs, heroin addicts, and Haitians. We were the only ones identified by nationality.
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In terms of the idea of long-term occupation - I have been reading a little bit more about this period - and you can see in that occupation are many lessons for the current occupation of Iraq. So we have these connections that go way back that people aren't aware of.
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I'm just melancholy by nature, and a lot of that gets into my writing.
Edwidge Danticat
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When I meet people for the first time, I always put on my glasses because I feel like that's a little something extra between me and them. It's like the Laurence Dunbar poem We Wear the Mask.
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...women, brave as stars at dawn
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To start with, for example this year, 2004, is the bicentennial of Haitian independence.
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Create dangerously, for people who read dangerously. ... Writing, knowing in part that no matter how trivial your words may seem, someday, somewhere, someone may risk his or her life to read them.
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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.
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I don't know what will happen to the physical book and what it will mean for authors. I worry whether it will mean people can still make their careers this way. Will whatever comes next allow people to be able to own their ideas and be able to take time to develop them?
Edwidge Danticat
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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 travel to the city.
Edwidge Danticat
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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.
Edwidge Danticat
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I'm not saying Cubans don't deserve asylum, but if it is a national security issue, there are people who are coming from Cuba on hijacked airplanes. Why isn't that a national security issue?
Edwidge Danticat
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I see the sharp inequality between how Haitian and Cuban refugees are treated in Florida. Both groups come here because their lives are equally desperate. But on arrival, the Haitians are incarcerated, and some are immediately repatriated, whereas Cubans get to stay and are eligible for citizenship.
Edwidge Danticat
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I am very timid about speaking for the collective. I can say what I see, I can say what I've heard, I can say what I feel, but I can't speak for - no one can speak for - 10 million people, and it takes away something from them if you make yourself their voice.
Edwidge Danticat
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We live now in a global culture where anything that happens in a place that's 90 minutes from your shores really affects you.
Edwidge Danticat
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Vodou is one of the religions practiced in Haiti, a rich religion for the people.
Edwidge Danticat