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.

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.

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.

And yet methinks the older that one growsInclines us more to laugh than scold, though laughterLeaves us so doubly serious shortly after.

I love the ocean because water from all sources mingle here, I love the ocean because it always returns all our valuables back, I love the ocean because it is the proof for abundance love & attachment.

Never make predictions, especially about the future.

I do not respect the Dalai Lama. He's a political power broker. The Dalai Lama is not honorable to me.

And when the fog's over and the stars and the moon come out at night it'll be a beautiful sight.

Jack Abramoff is going to testify against some of the other weasels in Congress. A lobbyist testifying against congressmen? How many Bibles are going to burst into flames in that courtroom?

One would think that if you're anonymous, you'd do anything you want, but groups have their own sense of community and what we can do.

When Spring is old, and dewy windsBlow from the south, with odors sweet,I see my love, in shadowy groves,Speed down dark aisles on shining feet.

I've stood my ground in life, alone, even against overwhelming forces with the might and money to crush me.

The earlier works of a man of genius are always preferred to the newer ones, in order to prove that he is going down instead of up.