You thought that if you didn’t tell the stories, the sky would fall on your head.
Life was neither something you defended by hiding nor surrendered calmly on other people’s terms, but something you lived bravely, out in the open, and that if you had to lose it, you should lose it on your own terms.
Writing is the way I participate in the struggle.
The girl she said, I didn’t tell you this because it was a small thing, but little girls, they leave their hearts at home when they walk outside. Hearts are so precious. They don’t want to lose them.
People are just too hopeful, and sometimes hope is the biggest weapon of all to use against us. People will believe anything.
When you are working on something, you have to believe that people will still be reading when you’re done!
The people did not elect me. I speak with one voice that may echo other people, but I am part of a group of people. That’s not distancing yourself from a community, that’s also allowing the space for others to speak for themselves.
Their Maker, she said, gives them the sky to carry because they are strong. These people do not know who they are, but if you see a lot of trouble in your life, it is because you were chosen to carry part of the sky on your head. -pg. 25.
I think novels just really show us the deepest parts of people’s hearts, and you cannot walk away anymore and say, “I don’t know.”
It’s hard to tell what people will do with the word and how they’ll be circulating it but I think the storytellers and the stories themselves will always be there.
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.
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.
I also know there are timeless waters, endless seas, and lots of people in this world whose names don’t matter to anyone but themselves. I look up at the sky and I see you there.
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.
Pretend that this is a time of miracles and we believe in them.
For the majority of the people it is a difficult place to live. That’s a reality that we can’t ignore. But there is also great beauty to it.
You learned in school that you have pencils and paper only because the trees gave themselves in unconditional sacrifice.
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.
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.
They say behind mountains are more mountains.