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There [Haiti] were also leaders like Jean-Jacques Dessalines, whose motto was, Cut their heads off, burn their houses.

Edwidge Danticat

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Edwidge Danticat
Age: 55
Born: 1969
Born: January 19
Author
Novelist
Writer
Port au Prince
House
Motto
Also
Houses
Like
Burn
Heads
Leaders
Whose
Jacques
Cutting
Jean
Leader
Haiti

More quotes by Edwidge Danticat

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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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Wonderful thing about novels is that sometimes we read a novel and we know the person in the novel more than we know people in our own lives.
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It is the calm and silent waters that drown you.
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People aren't really aware of what's happening in other places.
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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.
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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?
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To start with, for example this year, 2004, is the bicentennial of Haitian independence.
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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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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.
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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.
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I'm happy to be part of this chorus of people who are trying to tell more complex stories about Haiti.
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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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In Haiti you had the Duvaliers for 29 years and they were very well supported by the United States.
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Whole interaction between the storyteller and the listeners had a very powerful influence on me.
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Pretend that this is a time of miracles and we believe in them.
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If a woman is worth remembering,' said my grandmother, 'there is no need to have her name carved in letters.
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There is a frustration too, that at moments when there's not a coup, when there are not people in the streets, that the country disappears from people's consciousness.
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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.
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I'm just melancholy by nature, and a lot of that gets into my writing.
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Vodou is one of the religions practiced in Haiti, a rich religion for the people.
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