If you never stepped on anybody's toes, you never been for a walk.

When you pick up a novel from the bed side table, you put down your own life at the same time and you become another person for the duration.

Most people no longer believe that buying sneakers made in Asian sweatshops is a kindness to those child laborers. Farming is similar. In every country on earth, the most human scenario for farmers is likely to be feeding those who live nearby-if international markets would allow them to do it. Food transport has become a bizarre and profitable economic equation that's no longer really about feeding anyone ... If you care about farmers, let the potatoes stay home.

I'm never going to tell the reader what to believe; I'm going to examine these characters that believe different ways, and examine their motives.

It's very important to distinguish between innocence and naivete. The innocent do not deserve to be the victims of violence. But only the naive refuse to think about the origins of violence and to pursue the possibility that the genesis of that hatred could be addressed.

It's the one thing we never quite get over: that we contain our own future.

That's how it is: some people are content to wait till you ask, while others jump right in with the whole story.