A Quote by Jørgen Leth

Haiti is the best cure against melancholy; it is also the most creative place for me to be. My productivity has increased enormously since I moved to Haiti. That's where I write my stories, develop my ideas and write nonstop, so it's a productive time, not a sleepy time.

Jørgen Leth

Quote Topics

Against Also Best Creative Cure Develop Haiti Ideas Increased Me Melancholy Most Moved Nonstop Place Productive Productivity Since Sleepy Stories Time Write

Quote Author

Jørgen Leth
Danish - Poet
Born: June 14, 1937

My first visit to Haiti was in May 1991, four months into the initial term of Haiti's first democratically-elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. At the time, it seemed that Haiti was on the cusp of a new era.

Ben Fountain

Haiti is the poorest country in our hemisphere. The earthquake and the hurricanes, it has devastated Haiti. Bill Clinton and I have been involved in trying to help Haiti for many years.

Hillary Clinton

But I think it's very key that there's a plan for Haiti. And we have to begin to - as progressives and people who are concerned about Haiti and have been concerned about Haiti, we have to begin to build some sort of consensus, a movement around the Haiti that the Haitians envision.

Danny Glover

Haiti is not an easy place to fight disease, even in the best of times. That was true even before a devastating earthquake ravaged Haiti's capital and largest city, Port-au-Prince, in 2010.

Tom Frieden

There is this split between the Haiti of before the earthquake and the Haiti of after the earthquake. So when I'm writing anything set in Haiti now, whether fiction or nonfiction, always in the back of my mind is how people, including some of my own family members, have been affected not just by history and by the present but also by the earthquake.

Edwidge Danticat

Countries should think of Haiti not as a place where to do charity but a place where to invest and do business. And doing business in Haiti means poverty reduction.

Laurent Lamothe

Those of you who have been there [Haiti] know it is one of the most beautiful countries in the world. It has everything. It has everything above the ground, and everything under the ground.... It is an amazing place. I strongly recommend that whenever you get a chance, if you haven't been there, that you go to Haiti. I think it was a certain Queen of England who said that after her death "Calais" would be found written on her heart. When I die, I think that "Haiti" is going to be written on my heart.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Man is still by instinct a predatory animal given to devilish aggression. The discoveries of science have immensely increased productivity of material things. They have increased the standards of living and comfort. They have eliminated infinite drudgery. They have increased leisure. But that gives more time for devilment. The work of science has eliminated much disease and suffering. It has increased the length of life. That, together with increase in productivity, has resulted in vastly increased populations. Also it increased the number of people engaged in devilment.

Herbert Hoover

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.

Edwidge Danticat

Sometimes people who want to understand Haiti from a political perspective may be missing part of the picture. They also need to look at Haiti from a psychological perspective.

Jean-Bertrand Aristide

If any country was a mine-shaft canary for the reintroduction of cholera, it was Haiti - and we knew it. And in retrospect, more should have been done to prepare for cholera... which can spread like wildfire in Haiti... This was a big rebuke to all of us working in public health and health care in Haiti.

Paul Farmer

Haiti, Haiti, the further I am from you, the less I breathe. Haiti, I love you, and I will love you always. Always.

Jean-Bertrand Aristide

Sometimes people who want to understand Haiti from a political perspective may be missing part of the picture. They also need to look at Haiti from a psychological perspective. Most of the elite suffer from psychogenic amnesia. That means it's not organic amnesia, such as damage caused by brain injury. It's just a matter of psychology.

Jean-Bertrand Aristide

I can write ten or twelve screenplays in the time it takes me to write one novel. This allows me to offload all of my stories. But it's also not as creatively fulfilling.

Benjamin Percy

I never considered myself as somebody in exile because, different to my father who, yes, was in exile because he left Haiti as an adult, for me it was just to be somewhere else. I carried Haiti with me everywhere, but I also carried, you know, my youth in a public school in Brooklyn. It's part of who I am as well.