212 Quotes by Edwidge Danticat

Life’s hard in Haiti right now. And the hardest thing is that the future does not lie with one person.

She made sadness beautiful.

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.

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.”

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

That’s whatever news topic, whatever political process any country is going through – whenever they are in the news, that’s when they exist. If you don’t see them they don’t exist.

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.”

Isabelle didn’t need to call my name. Not because of the twin telepathy thing people always talk about, but because we were holding hands. We were holding hands the tightest we have ever held hands in our entire lives. We were holding hands just as we had on the day we were born.