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.

Curing yourself of obsessive compulsive disorder by going to a strip club is pretty strange.

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

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.

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

When writers stop believing in their own stories, readers tend to sense it.

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.