Madison Smartt Bell Quotes

"To me, there is nothing more soothing than the song of a mosquito that can't get through the mesh to bite you."

"I have always had a mystical attitude toward inspiration. That's my nature."

"One can't do anything alone in Haiti. Sharing and cooperation are so deeply woven into the culture that sometimes it's hard to have a separate thought."

"Our cultural capital has changed tremendously on its way into the twenty-first century. Manhattan has been secured and sanitized; it's smoke- and trans-fat-free. In the boroughs, many of the old jungles have been cleared as well."

"Haiti was founded by African slaves who rose against their European masters, had a revolution, and created a new state. There is no other such event in Western history."

"In 'For Whom the Bell Tolls,' Hemingway cozies up to revolution by romanticizing it (and not only with those execrable love scenes)."

"I had been an abject fan of Robert Stone since the early eighties, when I borrowed a copy of 'A Flag for Sunrise' to read on a plane to Rome. I was twenty-something, with a first novel under my belt."

"I had a house in Haiti, in the hills above the North Atlantic coast. The house appeared as if out of a dream: my dream to have a foothold in the country. Like many concepts do in Haiti, the phrase 'pied a terre' became literal, material."

"Since the 1960s, exile for Haitians is a condition that ends only to begin again."

"The country is too often assumed to be a backward place: The First World has trouble remembering that Haitians were two centuries ahead of us in abolishing slavery and in extending full rights of citizenship to everyone, regardless of race."

"I don't call myself a very good Christian, but I think I know one when I see one, and I also think I know when I don't."