We Try To Keep The

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.

After The Dance Was My First Attempt At Nonfiction. I'd Never Really Participated In Carnival, And I Really Wanted To Go. It Sounded Like A Wonderfully Fun Thing To Do. And I Wanted To Write Something Happy About Haiti, Something Celebratory. And Going To Carnival Gave Me A Chance To Do That, Because It Is One Of The Instances In Haiti When People Shed Their Class Separation And Come Together.

Write What Haunts You. What Keeps You Up At Night. What You Are Unable To Get Out Of Your Mind. Sometimes They Are The Hardest Things To Write, But Those Are Often The Things That Are Worth Investigating By You Specifically. . .

The Way The Media Cycle Works, The Way The News Works, And The Way People's Attention Span Works, Is That We Only Learn That People Exist When There Is Crisis.

I Think We All Wear Some Kind Of Mask. There Are Masks That Shield Us From Others, But There Are Masks That Embolden Us, And You See That In Carnival. The Shiest Child Puts On A Mask And Can Do Anything And Be Anybody.