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

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.

.. 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.

Meditation is not just blissing out under a mango tree. It completely changes your brain and therefore changes what you are.

The trouble with forgiveness is that some people don't want to be forgiven.

To measure up to all that is demanded of him a man must overestimate his capacities.

Reverence for life affords me my fundamental principle of morality.

Republicans have to finally get smart and come together.

The opposite of retaliation is to entrust ourselves to God, who judges justly.

Writing a book is quite an undertaking and I wouldn't want to do it just to do it.

What is the world coming to?

In order to win you must be prepared to lose sometime. And leave one or two cards showing.

He who pretends to be either painter or engraver without being a master of drawing is an imposter.