I've Said It Before And I'll Say

People Naturally Long For A Bit Of The Wealth That Is Whorling All Around Them, And If The Work And Education Available To Them Won't Get Them Closer To The Comforts That They See Others Enjoying, The Temptation To Take Shortcuts Can Be Fierce.

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.

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.

It Seemed To Him That In Annawadi, Fortunes Derived Not Just From What People Did, Or How Well They Did It, But From The Accidents And Catastrophes They Dodged. A Decent Life Was The Train That Hadn’t Hit You, The Slumlord You Hadn’t Offended, The Malaria You Hadn’t Caught.