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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.
Edwidge Danticat
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Edwidge Danticat
Age: 55
Born: 1969
Born: January 19
Author
Novelist
Writer
Port au Prince
Media
Attention
Span
Learn
Cycle
Way
Cycles
People
Crisis
Exist
News
Works
More quotes by Edwidge Danticat
I think it is important to reach people through arts and literature, because then you establish a connection that's not an instant crisis.
Edwidge Danticat
I'm happy to be part of this chorus of people who are trying to tell more complex stories about Haiti.
Edwidge Danticat
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
America's relationship with Haiti has always been very complicated. I often say to people, Before we came to America, America came to us in the form of the American occupation from 1915 to 1934.
Edwidge Danticat
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.
Edwidge Danticat
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.
Edwidge Danticat
When you are working on something, you have to believe that people will still be reading when you're done!
Edwidge Danticat
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.
Edwidge Danticat
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
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.
Edwidge Danticat
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
In Haiti you had the Duvaliers for 29 years and they were very well supported by the United States.
Edwidge Danticat
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
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
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
...women, brave as stars at dawn
Edwidge Danticat
If a woman is worth remembering,' said my grandmother, 'there is no need to have her name carved in letters.
Edwidge Danticat
Once you're involved in the work, it's really just you and the characters and the words.
Edwidge Danticat
Vodou is one of the religions practiced in Haiti, a rich religion for the people.
Edwidge Danticat
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.
Edwidge Danticat
