Quote

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.

Edwidge Danticat

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Edwidge Danticat
Age: 55
Born: 1969
Born: January 19
Author
Novelist
Writer
Port au Prince
Life
Read
Dangerously
People
Words
Trivial
Someone
Someday
Part
Somewhere
Seems
Seem
May
Risk
Matter
Create
Writing
Knowing

More quotes by Edwidge Danticat

Image
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
Edwidge Danticat
Image
When you are working on something, you have to believe that people will still be reading when you're done!
Edwidge Danticat
Image
It's interesting to see people overcome things. Because if you didn't overcome, you wouldn't be writing it.
Edwidge Danticat
Image
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.
Edwidge Danticat
Image
People aren't really aware of what's happening in other places.
Edwidge Danticat
Image
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
Image
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.
Edwidge Danticat
Image
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.
Edwidge Danticat
Image
I'm just melancholy by nature, and a lot of that gets into my writing.
Edwidge Danticat
Image
Misery won't touch you gentle. It always leaves its thumbprints on you sometimes it leaves them for others to see, sometimes for nobody but you to know of.
Edwidge Danticat
Image
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.
Edwidge Danticat
Image
I was able to not fold and go in a corner because I had my writing as therapy, but also as my tool for struggle.
Edwidge Danticat
Image
And the fact that Haiti was occupied for 19 years by the United States, from 1915 to 1934.
Edwidge Danticat
Image
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.
Edwidge Danticat
Image
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
Image
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
Image
All anyone can hope for is just a tiny bit of love, like a drop in a cup if you can get it, or a waterfall, a flood, if you can get that too.
Edwidge Danticat
Image
Whole interaction between the storyteller and the listeners had a very powerful influence on me.
Edwidge Danticat
Image
Once you're involved in the work, it's really just you and the characters and the words.
Edwidge Danticat
Image
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