Author Quotes

I want my prose to be as clear as a pane of glass.

I usually write about ordinary people and ordinary things, but Paul Farmer is the least ordinary person I've ever met... He's the leader of a small group of people who hope to cure a sick world, and I hope my book can help in some small way.

I think if the writing comes too easily, it shows - it's usually hard to read.

I tell beginning readers to read a lot and write a lot. If you want to write a book, find a subject that's really worth the time and effort you'll put in.

I never planned on doing a book about Paul Farmer or his organization. I met him in Haiti when I was on a magazine assignment. It's almost like his story sort of fell in my lap.

I know that to write you have to have stories you want to tell. You have to keep your mind alive, and you have to work hard.

I do believe that enduring geological features are important, though I don't think I can be clear about exactly why.

I always want to write something better than the last book.

Continuity is one of the things I like about New England.

Being a professional writer is not an easy way to make a living.

At first, I spend about four hours a day writing. Toward the end of a book, I spend up to 16 hours a day on it, because all I want to do is make it good and get it done.

You do the right thing even if it makes you feel bad. The purpose of life is not to be happy but to be worthy of happiness.

Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps' pollution. No refuge could save the hireling and slave from the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave.

He will therefore seek to establish for his country in the eyes of the world, such a character as shall make her not unworthy of the name of a Christian nation.

Then, in that hour of deliverance, my heart spoke. Does not such a country, and such defenders of their country, deserve a song?

The patriot who feels himself in the service of God, who acknowledges Him in all his ways, has the promise of Almighty direction, and will find His Word in his greatest darkness.

Allen Ginsberg is a tremendous warrior as time goes by. He's a warrior first and a poet second.

When Shakespeare was writing, he wasn't writing for stuff to lie on the page; it was supposed to get up and move around.

The Haight is just a place; the '60s was a spirit.

The '60s aren't over; they won't be over until the Fat Lady gets high.

Nowhere else in history has there ever been a flag that stands for the right to burn itself. This is the fractal of our flag. It stands for the right to destroy itself.

The fundamentalists have taken the fun out of the mental.

The frontiers we broke into in the '60s are still largely unexplored.

Loved. You can't use it in the past tense. Death does not stop that love at all.

People don't want other people to get high, because if you get high, you might see the falsity of the fabric of the society we live in.

Listen, wait, and be patient. Every shaman knows you have to deal with the fire that's in your audience's eye.

Fascism wants Baptism coast to coast.

You've got to get out and pray to the sky to appreciate the sunshine; otherwise you're just a lizard standing there with the sun shining on you.

There's something about taking a plow and breaking new ground. It gives you energy.

I was raised a Christian and was a stone-faced acid head.