Thinking Quotes by Madison Smartt Bell

To me, there is nothing more soothing than the song of a mosquito that can't get through the mesh to bite you.

— Madison Smartt Bell

Jeremy Popkin's collection of first-person narratives of the Haitian Revolution is an extremely valuable work, accessible, sound and intelligent. I only wish such a…

— Madison Smartt Bell

“Here, when you looked into darkness, there was God.”

— Madison Smartt Bell

Since the 1960s, exile for Haitians is a condition that ends only to begin again.

— Madison Smartt Bell

“Nothing could have been prevented. But still you know that somehow something wasn't watching. Something let attention lapse, releasing everything that follows, as the…

— Madison Smartt Bell

I had been an abject fan of Robert Stone since the early eighties, when I borrowed a copy of 'A Flag for Sunrise' to…

— Madison Smartt Bell

John Fahey, thought during his lifetime to be possibly more than a little crazy, was the author of some thirty albums of gnomically introverted…

— Madison Smartt Bell

In TheColorful Apocalypse, Greg Bottoms explores the frontier between inspiration and psychosis with the expressive power, the passionate fervor, and the faithfully unflinching honesty…

— Madison Smartt Bell

Haiti was founded by African slaves who rose against their European masters, had a revolution, and created a new state. There is no other…

— Madison Smartt Bell

Edwidge Danticat's prose has a Chekhovian simplicity--an ability to state the most urgent truths in a measured and patiently plain style that gathers a…

— Madison Smartt Bell

I have always had a mystical attitude toward inspiration. That's my nature.

— Madison Smartt Bell

“We don't kill for no reason. As he spoke, the hummingbird pulsed between his palms like a heartbeat, whirred into the air and flew.”

— Madison Smartt Bell