I wanted to raise the voice of a lot of the people that I knew growing up, and this was, for the most part, poor people who had extraordinary dreams but also very amazing obstacles.

That's whatever news topic, whatever political process any country is going through - whenever they are in the news, that's when they exist. If you don't see them they don't exist.

To start with, for example this year, 2004, is the bicentennial of Haitian independence.

I think daily that the country's future is being thrown to the wind.

People aren't really aware of what's happening in other places.

Or even the state of Florida, where they are prepared to execute children. Umm, well, you hope that at least that there is something there to be claimed.

On some levels, you can also have this feeling that we are being duped, somehow. And that the world is at play for something you would understand more if it were pure ideology. It is a very strange time and also basic things are being taken away.

Napoleon had been fighting this army of slaves and free people in Haiti and it depleted his forces. And after the Revolution, when the French were driven out, they stopped and sold this big chunk of North America to the Americans for very little money.

Creating these messes that go from administration to administration and then you swoop in and clean them up - with that heroic Delta force - people not realizing that they were always there but doing different things than what we see them doing at the moment.

People who want alternative information have to try so hard to find it.

I wanted to raise the voice of a lot of the people that I knew growing up, and this was, for the most part, poor people who had extraordinary dreams but also very amazing obstacles.

Someone has said that nations have interests, they don't have friends, and you see that over and over in U.S. policy.

On some level, now, we are joining the larger world and realizing that we are connected with people in these very scary ways, sometimes. What happened recently in Spain affects us here and brings questions up. It is too bad that people have to be shaken up in that way.

I think Haiti is a place that suffers so much from neglect that people only want to hear about it when It's at its extreme. And that's what they end up knowing about it.

There is a frustration too, that at moments when there's not a coup, when there are not people in the streets, that the country disappears from people's consciousness.

You have all these people in the city and everything has become centralized. If you live outside the city and you need a birth certificate or some official paper from the government, you have to travel to the city.

People think that there is a country there that these people are only around when they are on CNN. I don't think that's limited to Haiti.

In Haiti you had the Duvaliers for 29 years and they were very well supported by the United States.

In terms of the idea of long-term occupation - I have been reading a little bit more about this period - and you can see in that occupation are many lessons for the current occupation of Iraq. So we have these connections that go way back that people aren't aware of.

In fact that is the struggle that most Americans - As rich as this country is, most Americans are very limited in their interaction with the world, unless the world comes to us in a very shocking way.

And the fact that Haiti was occupied for 19 years by the United States, from 1915 to 1934.

More and more people are able to access information - thank goodness we have the Internet and if you are interested you can find things. Which is different than even 20 years ago.

Also, people are not often aware of the way the United States' policies influence what happens in places like Haiti or El Salvador or Nicaragua. Or in Columbia right now.

Especially moments when things are very difficult and complicated for me and I am still trying to grasp what is happening and I am still trying to understand and to reach family back home.

Misery won't touch you gentle. It always leaves its thumbprints on you; sometimes it leaves them for others to see, sometimes for nobody but you to know of.

These were our bedtime stories. Tales that haunted our parents and made them laugh at the same time. We never understood them until we were fully grown and they became our sole inheritance

Art is a luxury but also a necessity.

Love is like the rain. It comes in a drizzle sometimes. Then it starts pouring and if you're not careful it will drown you.

One of the most adventurous things left us is to go to bed. For no one can lay a hand on our dreams.

My life has been a continuous fulfillment of dreams. It appears that everything I saw and did has a new, and perhaps, more significant meaning, every time I see it. The earth is good. It is a privilege to live thereon.

Vain hopes are like certain dreams of those who wake.

We don't have an eternity to realize our dreams, only the time we are here.

Rude contact with facts chased my visions and dreams quickly away, and in their stead I beheld the horrors, the corruption, the evils and hypocrisy of society, and as I stood among them, a young wife, a great wail of agony went out from my soul.

The world is seldom what it seems; to man, who dimly sees, realities appear as dreams, and dreams realities.

I worked on my voice for Sweet Dreams, but only to match my speaking voice to Patsy's actual singing voice. That was my way into that character.

In my dreams, I could be a Princess, and that's what I was. Like most little girls, I believed nothing less than a Prince could make my dreams come true.

The only time you really live fully is from thirty to sixty. The young are slaves to dreams; the old servants of regrets. Only the middle-aged have all their five senses in the keeping of their wits.

The name Air Supply sort of came from nowhere. I get a lot of my things in dreams and I just had a dream about it one night, and I woke up and said that's just got to be the name. That was in 1975.

Only in our dreams are we free. The rest of the time we need wages.

War is eternity jammed into frantic minutes that will fill a lifetime with dreams and nightmares.

All books are either dreams or swords, you can cut, or you can drug, with words.

I'd really like to get the girl, shoot the gun, drive the car, have fun. I even have these kind of action dreams, where I'm the action guy.

Hopes are but the dreams of those that wake.

Judge of your natural character by what you do in your dreams.

I am accustomed to sleep and in my dreams to imagine the same things that lunatics imagine when awake.

I am so excited to let fans in on how important my relationship with my family is to me. I hope to motivate mothers and daughters to build lifetimes of memories together and inspire kids around the world to live their dreams.

Let your dreams outgrow the shoes of your expectations.

It's a pity one can't imagine what one can't compare to anything. Genius is an African who dreams up snow.

Dreams seem to have a will of their own.