Edwidge Danticat
Edwidge Danticat
Edwidge Danticatis a Haitian–American novelist and short story writer...
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth19 January 1969
water calm silent
It is the calm and silent waters that drown you.
writing practice stressful
The more practice you have, the less stressful writing is.
years haiti united-states
In Haiti you had the Duvaliers for 29 years and they were very well supported by the United States.
reality people majority
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.
country children destiny
The justification - the idea that we have a right to invade another country and determine another people's destiny - is frightening. And I fear really for the future of that occupation. What happens now, and twenty years from now, and forty years from now, given our case? People in the United States may feel like when we don't see it on CNN twenty-four hours a day, it sort of disappears. But it doesn't disappear for the people who have to live under occupation - and their children and their children's children.
writing melancholy
I'm just melancholy by nature, and a lot of that gets into my writing.
reading believe people
When you are working on something, you have to believe that people will still be reading when you're done!
creating people different
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.
thinking knowing people
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.
dream art block
That experience of touching down in a totally foreign place is like having a blank canvas: You begin with nothing, but stroke by stroke you build a life. This process requires everything great art requires-risk-tasking, hope, a great deal of imagination, all the qualities that are the building blocks of art. You must be able to dream something nearly impossible and toil to bring it into existence.
sea sky names
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.
literature needs humans
We need literature because we wouldn’t fully know ourselves without it. We need good literature to be fully human.
heart thinking people
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."
book firsts process
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.