Quotes by Haitian Authors

When you write, it’s like braiding your hair. Taking a handful of coarse unruly strands and attempting to bring them unity. Your fingers have still not perfected the task. Some of the braids are long, others are short. Some are thick, others are thin. Some are heavy. Others are light. Like the diverse women of your family. Those whose fables and metaphors, whose similes and soliloquies, whose diction and je ne sais quoi daily slip into your survival soup, by way of their fingers.
Edwidge Danticat
...women, brave as stars at dawn
Edwidge Danticat
This world that we live in would be perfect if there were less prejudice and people who think they are better than others.
Werley Nortreus
If I can't be remembered as one of the greatest authors, why not be remembered as the sexiest writer...
Hans Lindor
You may be surprised what we use our dreams to do, how we drape them over our sight and carry them like amulets to protect us from evil spells.
Edwidge Danticat
I once heard an elder say that the dead who have no use for their words leave them as part of their children's inheritance. Proverbs, teeth suckings, obscenities, even grunts and moans once inserted in special places during conversations, all are passed along to the next heir.
Edwidge Danticat
I believe in Jesus Christ. He said deny me in front of your friends & I will deny you in front of my father.
Werley Nortreus
Stop living a double life, God isn't looking for a part- time christian but he's looking for a full-time Christian.
Werley Nortreus
The immigrant artist shares with all other artists the desire to interpret and possibly remake his or her own world. So though we may not be creating as dangerously as our forebears—though we are not risking torture, beatings, execution, though exile does not threaten us into perpetual silence— still, while we are at work bodies are littering the streets somewhere. People are buried under rubble somewhere. Mass graves are being dug somewhere. Survivors are living in makeshift tent cities and refugee camps somewhere, shielding their heads from the rain, closing their eyes, covering their ears, to shut out the sounds of military “aid” helicopters. And still, many are reading, and writing, quietly, quietly.
Edwidge Danticat
I'm just a young guy with big dreams who is working hard to make it on top while many people are waiting for my downfall, they don't support but hate and talk negativity.
Werley Nortreus
Welcome to America, where racism will never end, white don't respect black, where black skin people are treated like criminals.
Werley Nortreus
Racism is not funny, because it won't solve anything, but making it worst instead, because racism is the reason the world is no longer great.
Werley Nortreus
Our God is an awesome God, he reigns from Heaven above, the most high God of all time.
Werley Nortreus
Those who die young, they are cheated,” she said. “Not cheated out of life, because life is a penance, but the young, they’re cheated because they don’t know it’s coming. They don’t have time to move closer, to return home. When you know you’re going to die, you try to be near the bones of your own people. You don’t even think you have bones when you’re young, even when you break them, you don’t believe you have them. But when you’re old, they start reminding you they’re there. They start turning to dust on you, even as you’re walking here and there, going from place to place. And this is when you crave to be near the bones of your own people. My children never felt this. They had to look death in the face, even before they knew what it was. Just like you did, no?
Edwidge Danticat
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.
Edwidge Danticat
The government is not your salvation. The government is not your road to prosperity. Hard work, education will take you far beyond what any government program can ever promise.
Mia Love
You gotta know that People will say a million negative things about you before they mention 1 good thing, don't be surprise if they never said that 1 good thing about you.
Werley Nortreus
Different skin color and same blood color is something that most people don't know, they don't know because arrogance make them racist and ignorant.
Werley Nortreus
Stay away from negative people, solution aren't the problem, they hate that, they are the problem.
Werley Nortreus
As I grew up I was fervently desirous of becoming acquainted with Nature.
John James Audubon
Observing someone doesn't mean that you know them. Too many folks think they know you when they really don't know you.
Werley Nortreus
I began my effort at improving my flight experiences by reading purposefully during my flights. My airplane reading would often be centered on themes. On some flights I would read only newspapers and magazines, catching up on one particular event. On other flights I would read a short novel, and finishing the entire book during the flight would give me a great thrill, as if I'd just flown a cross-Atlantic mission with Amelia Earhart.
Edwidge Danticat
I no longer know who I am, as I refuse to remember who I was.
Hans Lindor
Nothing in this world is guaranteed, as life itself is a gamble.
Hans Lindor
It's the same with [my wife] -- when she goes out, guys are macking on her. I'm not worried with the kind of relationship we've got. Most people, they don't leave room for mistakes in their relationship.
Wyclef Jean
When i dated someone, my goal is to marry her, i date to get married one day, i don't date a girl just to have sex and leave her, why wasting your time if the goal is not to get married?
Werley Nortreus
You're sad? I'll cheer you up. You're upset? I'd love to listen. All you have to do is come to me, you know I'll be there for you.
Werley Nortreus
Don't put too much trust on your education level, girlfriend, boyfriend, wife, husband, bank account, because they will fail you. Only put your 100% trust on God, you will succeed !
Werley Nortreus
When your girlfriend broke your heart, don't even say a word, just smile because she gives you the opportunity to find someone better than her.
Werley Nortreus
When a female cop pull you over for speeding, to get out of the ticket, talk nice to her, try to flirt or start crying, i bet she will save the ticket for you.
Werley Nortreus
I want to figure out how people can go on with their lives when mine has changed so much. I want to relearn how to breathe without carrying this big, empty cave inside me.
Edwidge Danticat
There is always a place where, if you listen closely in the night, you will hear a mother telling a story and at the end of the tale, she will ask you this question: 'Ou libéré?' Are you free, my daughter?"My grandmother quickly pressed her fingers over my lips.Now," she said, "you will know how to answer.
Edwidge Danticat
Perhaps there had been joy for them in finding that sugar could be made from blood.
Edwidge Danticat
Regardless of the difficulties we may face individually, in our families, in our communities and in our nation, the old adage is still true - you can make excuses or you can make progress, but you cannot make both!
Mia Love
Stop thinking that racism is fun until a racist person get under your skin, that's when you'll know racism is not fun.
Werley Nortreus
They are the people of creation. Their maker…gives them the sky to carry because they are so 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.
Edwidge Danticat
I had a dream, someone came to me and told me "Jesus Christ is coming in a couple days, time is near, only a couple days left for Christ to come" then I saw rocks coming from the air that caused disasters on earth. The end is near, don't ignore this very important message, it's your responsibility to save your soul from hell. The choice is yours, make sure you know your destination.
Werley Nortreus
A true conservationist is a man who knows that the world is not given by his fathers, but borrowed from his children.
John James Audubon
A true conservationist is a man who knows that the world is not given by his fathers, but borrowed from his children.
John James Audubon
So many people from my past taught me that it's not everyone that's in my life wants to see me achieve my goals and be great, but I thank God they're no longer in my life because I moved on a long time ago, welcome to my present.
Werley Nortreus
The world is not a great place because racist people come with a race type of agenda, and it don't make the world great, it makes it worst than ever.
Werley Nortreus
If we love each other without creating a race war, people wouldn't get hurt that much, and feelings too.
Werley Nortreus
Success is like water, the more thirsty you are for it is the more you will drink it, and you'll need it forever to survive.
Werley Nortreus
In life, you learned that not all white people are racist, not all black folks are criminals, let's admit it and love one another..
Werley Nortreus
No, women like you don't write. They carve onion sculptures and potato statues. They sit in dark corners and braid their hair in new shapes and twists in order to control the stiffness, the unruliness, the rebelliousness.
Edwidge Danticat
We have not reached the consensus that to eat is a basic human right. This is an ethical crisis. This is a crisis of faith.
Jean-Bertrand Aristide
The women in your family have never lost touch with one another. Death is a path we take to meet on the other side.
Edwidge Danticat
Old age is not meant to be survived alone," Man Rapadou said, her voice trailing with her own hidden thoughts. "Death should come gently, slowly, like a man's hand approaching your body. There can be joy in impatience if there is time to find the joy.
Edwidge Danticat
People are just too hopeful, and sometimes hope is the biggest weapon of all to use against us. People will believe anything.
Edwidge Danticat
People are unhappy when they get something too easily. You have to sweat--that's the only moral they know.
Dany Laferrière