The forces of justice had finally come to Annawadi. That the beneficiaries were horses was a source of bemusement to Sunil and the road boys.

.. 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.

The Indian criminal justice system was a market like garbage, Abdul now understood. Innocence and guilt could be bought and sold like a kilo of polyurethane bags.

Much of what was said did not matter, and that much of what mattered could not be said.

But something he'd come to realize on the roof, leaning out, thinking about what would happen if he leaned too far, was that a boy's life could still matter to himself.

He wanted to go home to the place that he hated.

Though Abdul had been as afraid of ghosts as most Annawadi boys, these reports did not disturb him. Being terrorized by living people seemed to have diminished his fear of the dead.

Focus isn't about hammering one nail all our lives.It’s about hammering lots of nails, one way, all our lives.

The President has a wonderful sense of humor, which is one of the reasons it is so much fun to work for him.

Write every day. Writing is a muscle that gets stronger with use.

If you analyse anything, you destroy it.

We all hope for breakthrough rebirth moments. When you're headed for a breakthrough moment, it's kind of scary because you say, 'If I break through then I have to make great change in my life.'

Plus, publishing's inherent conservatism, means that what little did get through was weighted towards the commercial end of the scale, which is not the kind of writing that excites me.

Everyone knows of great projects that were too dependent on a charismatic individual, or simply too expensive to be replicated.

Until we can sense a sacred quality in time we will not begin to have a fuller understanding of it.

Blaming things on the past does not make them better.

It's very hard to be honest with yourself when something's just not working.