There's some way in which we would prefer not to see very clearly the immense gifts and intelligence of some of the people who live in our most abject conditions. Maybe there are some things at work in deciding who gets to be society's winners and who gets to be society's losers that don't have to do with merit.

One thing that was very clear to me is that the young people in a place like Annawadi aren't tripping on caste the way their parents are. They know their parents have these old views.

In any country, corruption tends to increase when more respectable means of social advancement break down.

What you don't want is always going to be with you What you want is never going to be with you Where you don't want to go, you have to go And the moment you think you're going to live more, you're going to die

We often have an exaggerated sense of what nonprofits and governments are doing to help the poor, but the really inspiring thing is how much the poor are doing to help themselves.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Never trust anyone who tells you how people come to trust them.

My job is to lay it out clearly, not to give my policy prescriptions.Very little journalism is world changing. But if change is to happen, it will be because people with power have a better sense of what’s happening to people who have none.