The only real nation is humanity

...Attempts at imitation would put the emphasis where it didn't belong. The goal was to improve the lives of others, not oneself.

I usually write about ordinary people and ordinary things, but Paul Farmer is the least ordinary person I've ever met... He's the leader of a small group of people who hope to cure a sick world, and I hope my book can help in some small way.

I think if the writing comes too easily, it shows - it's usually hard to read.

That's when I feel most alive, he told me once on an airplane, when I'm helping people.

In order to go on with our lives, we are always capable of making the ominous into the merely strange.

I'm going to a commune in Vermont and will deal with no unit of time shorter than a season.