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

Things were here before you and will be here after you're gone. The geographic features, especially, give you a sense of your own place in the world and in time

The hardest thing was learning to write. I was 13, and the only writing I had done was for Social Studies. It consisted of copying passages right out of the encyclopedia

I know that to write you have to have stories you want to tell. You have to keep your mind alive, and you have to work hard.

Paul Farmer has helped to build amazing health care system in one of the poorest areas of Haiti. He founded Partners in Health, which serves the destitute and the sick in many parts of the world from Haiti to Boston and from Russia to Peru.

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

Most teachers have little control over school policy or curriculum or choice of texts or special placement of students, but most have a great deal of autonomy inside the classroom. To a degree shared by only a few other occupations, such as police work, public education rests precariously on the skill and virtue of the people at the bottom of the institutional pyramid.