The goofiness of radicals thinking they have to dress in Guatemalan peasant clothes. The poor don't want you to look like them. They want you to dress in a suit and go get them food and water. Comma.

Don't worry about being worried. You're heading out on an adventure and you can always change your mind along the way and try something else.

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.

At first, I spend about four hours a day writing. Toward the end of a book, I spend up to 16 hours a day on it, because all I want to do is make it good and get it done.

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

The combination of domesticity and wildness - that's a deep expression

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