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.

I'm going to a commune in Vermont and will deal with no unit of time shorter than a season.

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

The problem is fundamental... It is as if a secret committee, now lost to history, has made a study of children and, having figured out what the greatest number were least disposed to declared that all of them should do it.

If you had an essentially happy childhood, that tends to dwell with you.

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

I tell beginning readers to read a lot and write a lot. If you want to write a book, find a subject that's really worth the time and effort you'll put in.