The only real nation is humanity

Public education rests precariously on the skill and virtue of the people at the bottom of the institutional pyramid.

You do the right thing even if it makes you feel bad. The purpose of life is not to be happy but to be worthy of happiness.

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

If you live in the same small place long enough, something you don't like is bound to happen

And I can imagine Farmer saying he doesn't care if no one else is willing to follow their example. He's still going to make these hikes, he'd insist, because if you say that seven hours is too long to walk for two families of patients, you're saying that their lives matter less than some others', and the idea that some lives matter less is the root of all that's wrong with the world.

I want my prose to be as clear as a pane of glass.