25 quotes
This day, more than any other, should remind us that everyone seeking asylum deserves to be treated humanely.
The nomad or immigrant who learns something rightly must always ponder travel and movement, just as the grief-stricken must inevitably ponder death.
Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work (2010)
All artists, writers among them, have several stories-one might call them creation myths-that haunt and obsess them.
Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work (2010)
The person she'd been when the three of them, she and her husband and her son, had gotten on that boat and left Haiti-that person was also lost at sea.
Everything Inside (2019)
Reading, and perhaps ultimately writing, is nothing like living in a place and time where two very young men are killed in a way that is treated like entertainment.
Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work (2010)
most of my tourism is done through books.
'Freedom is a passing thing,' a man said. 'Someone can always come and snatch it away.' (p212)
The Farming of Bones (1998)
“No one will ever love you more than you love your pain,” he had replied, his words ringing even louder in the dark. (p154)
Claire of the Sea Light (2013)
The greatest gift anyone can give to a writer is time
'If a woman is worth remembering,' said my grandmother, 'there is no need to have her name carved in letters.' (p165)
Breath, Eyes, Memory (1994)
"Pretend that this is a time of miracles and we believe in them." ("A Wall of Fire Rising")
Krik? Krak! (1996)
'...She cannot stay out of duty. The things one does, one should do out of love.' (p155)
Breath, Eyes, Memory (1994)
"...The things one does, one should do out of love." (chapter 17 p118)
Breath, Eyes, Memory (1994)
Often when we migrate, we find ourselves with these types of persons—the torturers and the victims mixed together in the same neighborhood.
with Progressive (2003)
That night, I slept hugging my secret. (p112)
Breath, Eyes, Memory (1994)
'Misery won't touch you gentle. It always leaves its thumbprints on you; sometimes it leaves them for others to see, sometimes for nobody but you to know of.' (p145)
The Farming of Bones (1998)
How do you even choose what to mend when so much has already been destroyed? How could she think, she asked herself, that she could revive or save anything? (p152)
Claire of the Sea Light (2013)
It comes on again on her grandson's christening day. A lost moment, a blank spot, one that Carole does not know how to measure. She is there one second, then she is not. She knows exactly where she is, then she does not.
Everything Inside (2019)
They say the Lord gives and the Lord takes away. I have never been given very much. What was there to take away? ("Children of the Sea")
Krik? Krak! (1996)
'It is the calm and silent waters that drown you...' (p172)
Breath, Eyes, Memory (1994)