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.

People naturally long for a bit of the wealth that is whorling all around them, and if the work and education available to them won't get them closer to the comforts that they see others enjoying, the temptation to take shortcuts can be fierce.

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

I tell Allah I love Him immensely, immensely. But I tell Him I cannot be better, because of how the world is.

A great deal of what is presumed to be intractable or inevitable in this world doesn't strike me that way at all.

...much of what was said did not matter, and that much of what mattered could not be said.

It seemed to him that in Annawadi, fortunes derived not just from what people did, or how well they did it, but from the accidents and catastrophes they dodged. A decent life was the train that hadn’t hit you, the slumlord you hadn’t offended, the malaria you hadn’t caught.