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.

.. becoming attached to a country involves pressing, uncomfortable questions about justice and opportunity for its least powerful citizens.

But if writing about people who are not yourself is illegitimate, then the only legitimate work is autobiography; and as a reader and a citizen, I don’t want to live in that world.

Everyone in Annawadi talks like this: 'Oh, I will make my child a doctor, a lawyer, and he will make us rich'. It's vanity, nothing more. Your little boat goes west and you congratulate yourself, 'what a navigator I am!' And then the wind blows you east.

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.

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