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

among a coward's weapons, cynicism is the nastiest of all

I am grateful to Stacy Schiff first of all because she can write a sentence-because she offers us her scholarship with wit, clarity, and grace. Once again, she has done what only the best writers can do: she has made the world new, again.

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.

Many people find it easy to imagine unseen webs of malevolent conspiracy in the world, and they are not always wrong. But there is also an innocence that conspires to hold humanity together, and it is made of people who can never fully know the good that they have done.

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.

People say you cant teach writing, but I think thats nonsense.