But if writing about people who are not yourself is illegitimate, then the only legitimate work is autobiography; and as a reader and a citizen, I don’t want to live in that world.

...much of what was said did not matter, and that much of what mattered could not be said.

In any country, corruption tends to increase when more respectable means of social advancement break down.

I'm useless when I meet writers I love - I go slack-jawed and stupid with awe.

A great deal of what is presumed to be intractable or inevitable in this world doesn't strike me that way at all.

We often have an exaggerated sense of what nonprofits and governments are doing to help the poor, but the really inspiring thing is how much the poor are doing to help themselves.

One thing that was very clear to me is that the young people in a place like Annawadi aren't tripping on caste the way their parents are. They know their parents have these old views.

I think it's this congenital problem with journalism that we oversell the difference we make. We make small differences.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Never trust anyone who tells you how people come to trust them.

.. becoming attached to a country involves pressing, uncomfortable questions about justice and opportunity for its least powerful citizens.

I tell Allah I love Him immensely, immensely. But I tell Him I cannot be better, because of how the world is.

Family is always a mirror. You can hide from other people, you can even hide from yourself, but your family is going to reflect what you’re doing right back at you.

Sometimes losses in life are not losses at all. They are simply the evidence God provides, in order to build a story so profound, that it will cause social change.

I love disco and we sample it a lot for Duck Sauce. For me, that sound is kind of a new manifestation.

Religion is not the belief there is a god. Religion is the belief god tells you what to do.

Scientology is destructive and a rip-off.

New York's architecture alone is enough to inspire a whole album. In fact, that's what happened at first - my early stuff was mostly just interpretations of landscapes.

I felt that if others can overcome incredible challenges to be in shape, why would my story be any different?

There is space for a different kind of investigative reporting that's about immersion and obsessive attention to detail and deep listening.

Girl talk. That thing I've always been so bad at.

The accumulation of numbers always augments in some measure moral corruptions, and the consequences to health of the various vices incident thereto, are well known.