Island Beneath the Sea

We all have an unsuspected reserve of strength inside that emerges when life puts us to the test.

The slave who dances is free ... while he is dancing.

There is room in the human heart for all the divinities.

She intended to swallow the world and he lived crushed by reality.

Music is a wind that blows away the years, memories, and fear, that crouching animal I carry inside me.

I strike the ground with the soles of my feet and life rises up my legs, spreads up my skeleton, takes possession of me, drives away distress and sweetens my memory. The world trembles.

Sometimes I have these premonitions and I don't forget them, so I will be prepared when they happen.

Zacharie did not learn of the sorrow his wife was living becasue she was careful to hide it. Tete kept that first love, the stromngest in her life, a secret. She mentioned it only rarely because she could not offer Zacharie a passion of the same intensity; the relationship they shared was genntle and free of urgency.

As Sancho said, money does not buy happiness but it does buy nearly everything else.

Dance, dance, Zarité, the slave who dances is free…while he is dancing,” he told me. I have always danced.

Long before the Europeans arrived in Africa, the blacks were enslaving each other. They still do,” said Valmorain. “Just as whites are enslaving each other, monsieur,” the physician countered. “Not all Negroes are slaves, nor all slaves black. Africa is a continent of free people. Millions of Africans are subjected to slavery but many more are free. Slavery is not their destiny, just as is also the case with thousands of whites who are slaves.

Capitaine Etienne Relais was known to be incorruptible in an ambience in which vice was the norm, honor for sale, and laws made to be broken, and men operated on the assumption that he who did not abuse power did not deserve to have it.

That was the beginning of the revolution. Many years have gone by and blood keeps running, soaking the soil of Haiti, but I am not there to weep.

Leanne lighted an oil lamp and they continued until the moment came to receive the baby. 'Erzulie, mother loa, help it be born,' Tete prayed aloud. 'Saint Raymond Nonatus, pay attention, do not let an African saint get ahead of you,' Leanne answered in the same tone, and they both burst out laughing.

How would I run with my bad leg? And what would become of the people who need my care? Besides, it doesn't mean anything for me to be free and everyone else slaves," the healer answered. Tete hadn't thought of that, and it kept buzzing around her brain like a bottlefly. She talked about it with her godmother many times, but she was never able to accept the idea that her freedom was irreparably bound to that of the other slaves.

A slave lacks incentives; for him it is better to work slowly and badly, since his effort benefits only the master, but free people work hard to save and get ahead,, that is their incentive.

I called him Grandfather, because according to him you do not have to be of the same blood or same tribe to be a member of the same family, but in truth I should have called him Maman. He was the only mother I ever knew.

There was an army of hundreds of thousands of spirits fighting alongside the blacks, and that was why finally the whites were defeated. Everyone is in agreement about that, even the French soldiers, who felt the spirits’ fury. Maître Valmorain, who did not believe in anything he did not understand, and as he understood very little believed in nothing, was also convinced that the dead aided the rebels.

In her experience, light skin and money made almost anything easier. She wanted her grandchildren to come into the world with an advantage.

Walking and walking across the world he will gradually find consolation, and one day, when he is too fatigued to take another step, he will realize that he cannot escape sorrow, he will have to tame it, so it doesn’t harass him.

His wife, Leanne, who came to his waist, looked like an undernourished adolescent with the face of a fly, but her fragility was deceptive: she had given birth to six male children and was expecting the seventh. She knew it would be male because God was determined to test her patience.

Leanne lighted an oil lamp and they continued until the moment came to receive the baby. “Erzulie, mother loa, help it be born,” Tété prayed aloud. “Saint Raymond Nonatus, pay attention, do not let an African saint get ahead of you,” Leanne answered in the same tone, and they both burst out laughing.