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

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.

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.

I have a little moral trouble with the term “mankind”, as it possesses an innate gender bias, which I cannot approve of, hence, I prefer the term “humanity” over it, and the term “human” over “man”.

We cannot let the haters of this world define us. Or frighten us into no longer being ourselves.

There's a darkness to everyone, you just have to let it out to see the world in new eyes.

The creative process can sustain itself throughout the entire celebration of photography.

There is no greater dishonesty than man effecting his own private gains at the expense of others.

Everything is a version of something else.

Straight roads do not make skillful drivers.

Beware of what you want-for you will get it.

Democracy, it appears, is a bit chancy. But its chances also depend on what we do ourselves