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1. black
2. grey
3. blue
4. red
5. brown
6. white

It took me 10 years to write a story that pleased me – that I could look at after it was published and not cringe.

Ben Fountain

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  Eruptions of talent continue to happen in Haiti, in spite of everything.

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  I really had to decide why I was writing. I had no interest in going back to law; I very briefly – for about six hours – considered going to get my MBA, but in the end, I realized that the only work I really wanted to do was write.

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  I kept going back while I was writing the novel – which never sold, may it rest in peace – and by the time it was finished I had too many connections to Haiti to walk away.

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  You’d think family would be the one sure thing in life, the gimme? Points you got just for being born? So much thick, meaty stuff bound you to these people.

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  If a person wants to be of any use to himself, he better insist on getting his fair share of beauty and pleasure, and if there’s something about the system that’s keeping him from getting his share, then I think he’s well within his rights to fight to change that.

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  I quit law in 1988 to start writing, and it took me 17 years from that point to get a book contract. I guess you can say I was on the slow train.

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  Haiti is unique – the first successful slave revolt in history, the first black republic etc., and then when you get into the culture, the voodoo, and that wonderful synchretization of Christian and African belief and symbology, it’s like nothing the world has ever seen.

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  Late bloomer’ is another way of saying ‘slow learner.

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  So many interlocking spirals of history, genetics, common cause, and struggle that it should be the most basic of all drives, that you would strive to protect and love one another, yet this bond that should be the big no-brainer was in fact the hardest thing.

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  Somewhere along the way America became a giant mall with a country attached.

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  By the end of the first decade of writing, I considered myself a confirmed failure in the eyes of the world.

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  From about the age of 15 or 16 I’d had the notion that I wanted to write fiction, and I’d done enough in college to satisfy myself that I had a knack for it – I wouldn’t call it “talent” – though I wondered if I’d ever have the guts to actually commit to it.

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  If you want to write, then write; if you don’t want to write, then don’t write. I fell into the former category, and I just made the decision that I’d keep on because I liked it and might someday do something decent.

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  Maybe the light’s at the other end of the tunnel.

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  I took two fiction-writing courses in college and majored in literature. I felt that I had a knack though I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a talent. But it scared me. I felt it was a childish thing wanting to write and that I would forget about it eventually.

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  The Kessler Theater is one such gem, an Art Deco beauty … for a slice of real life, there’s always the Kessler.

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