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

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.

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.

Never try to out-stubborn a cat.

To write a story about New York that only deals with people in your age and socioeconomic bracket, that feels dishonest to me. So much of New York comes from everyone bumping into each other.

Kittens will make your sad go away

Under President Obama's new health care law, Medicaid will become a very different health coverage program than first envisioned.

If you're at an award ceremony, you're against your mates.

Speech is the organ of this present world. Silence is the mystery of the world to come.

Love is not a because, it's a no matter what.

I'm constantly thinking.

Without courage there cannot be truth, and without truth there can be no other virtue.

This thing of darkness I acknowlege mine. There is nothing more confining than the prison we don't know we are in.