I wrote a novel about the combat experiences I didn't have in Vietnam.

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 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

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

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.

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've gotta keep life and computers separate, or else I'm gonna go mad.