212 Quotes by Edwidge Danticat

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."

I love the process of cracking the spine for the first time and slowly sinking into a book. That will soon seem old-fashioned, I'm sure, like the time of illuminated manuscripts.

Pretend that this is a time of miracles and we believe in them.

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

When people think about this religion, they'll say "voodoo" this and "voodoo" that in the way the Hollywood movies show it: the sticking of pins in dolls. It's very different than Vodou - which is a religion that comes to Haiti from our ancestors in Africa. I want to differentiate it from the stereotypical, sensationalized view that we see of the religion.

I think it is important to reach people through arts and literature, because then you establish a connection that's not an instant crisis.

At times I like it when he is just a deep echo, one utterance after another filling every crevice of the room, a voice that sounds like it’s never been an infant’s whimper, a boy’s whisper, a young man’s mumble, a voice that speaks as if every word it has ever uttered has always been and will always be for me.

And they shared, as she put it, an impractical love.

What I learned from my father and uncle, I learned out of sequence and in fragments. This is an attempt at cohesiveness, and at re-creating a few wondrous and terrible months when their lives and mine intersected in startling ways, forcing me to look forward and back at the same time. I am writing this only because they can’t.