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

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.

You know how they say the path to hell is paved with good intentions? Well, maybe the path to heaven is paved with bad ones.

After breakage/there is always sleep.

It is the risk element which ensures security. Risk brings out the ingenuity and resourcefulness which ensure success.

This virtual reality stuff is the technological equivalent, really, of psychedelics.

Idolatry is still a socially cohesive force - its original function.

I learn my songs by ear.

Lys," he whispered. "Do you know what's coming?" "Yes," she whispered. "And you know that I'll be with you until the end?

History has tried hard to teach us that we can't have good government under politicians. Now, to go and stick one at the very head of the government couldn't be wise.

Sometimes in television, if there are storylines that are oft-told, people can be hypercritical of them.

Some idiotic things are well worth doing.