The More Practice You Have, The Less

Salt Is A Powerful Symbol In Haiti, As Elsewhere. Salt Of The Earth, For Example Is An American Phrase. In Haiti, Myth And Legend Has It That If You Are Turned Into A Zombie, If Someone Gives You A Taste Of Salt, Then You Can Come Back To Life. And In The Life Of The Fishermen, There Are So Many Little Things About Salt That I Wanted To Incorporate. The Salt In The Air. The Crackling Of Salt In The Fire. There's All This Damage, This Peeling Of The Fishing Boats From The Sea Salt. But There Is Also Healing From It, Sea Baths That Are Supposed To Heal All Kinds Of Aches And Wounds.

I Would Hate For People To Generalize About Every Haitian From Something That One Haitian Did, Or A Group Of Haitians Did.

That Has Always Been A Strength Of Haiti: Beyond Crisis, It Has Beautiful Art; It Has Beautiful Music. But People Have Not Heard About Those As Much As They Heard About The Coups And So Forth. I Always Hope That The People Who Read Me Will Want To Learn More About Haiti.

I Think It's Hard To Write A Book About Happiness Because Fiction Requires Tension And Complication.

Jephthah Called Together The Men Of Gilead And Fought Against Ephraim. The Gileadites Captured The Fords Of The Jordan Leading To Ephraim, And Whenever A Survivor Of Ephraim Said, 'let Me Cross Over,' The Men Of Gilead Asked Him, 'are You An Ephraimite?' If He Replied, 'no,' They Said, 'all Right, Say Shibboleth.' If He Said, 'sibboleth,' Because He Could Not Pronounce The Word Correctly, They Seized And Killed Him At The Fords Of The Jordan. Fourty-thousand Were Killed At The Time.