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.

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

How could a just God permit great misery? The Haitian peasants answered with a proverb: "Bondye konn bay, men li pa konn separe," in literal translation, "God gives but doesn't share." This meant... God gives us humans everything we need to flourish, but he's not the one who's supposed to divvy up the loot. That charge was laid upon us.

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

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.

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.

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