...Attempts at imitation would put the emphasis where it didn't belong. The goal was to improve the lives of others, not oneself. Tracy Kidder More Quotes by Tracy Kidder More Quotes From Tracy Kidder Writing is revision. All prose responds to work. Tracy Kidder revision prose writing Don't worry about being worried. You're heading out on an adventure and you can always change your mind along the way and try something else. Tracy Kidder spring inspiring adventure I'm going to a commune in Vermont and will deal with no unit of time shorter than a season. Tracy Kidder vermont units deals Most teachers have little control over school policy or curriculum or choice of texts or special placement of students, but most have a great deal of autonomy inside the classroom. To a degree shared by only a few other occupations, such as police work, public education rests precariously on the skill and virtue of the people at the bottom of the institutional pyramid. Tracy Kidder teaching teacher school 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. Tracy Kidder purpose inspire life How could a just God permit great misery? The Haitian peasants answered with a proverb: "Bondye konn bay, men li pa konn separe," in literal translation, "God gives but doesn't share." This meant... God gives us humans everything we need to flourish, but he's not the one who's supposed to divvy up the loot. That charge was laid upon us. Tracy Kidder giving men needs Many people find it easy to imagine unseen webs of malevolent conspiracy in the world, and they are not always wrong. But there is also an innocence that conspires to hold humanity together, and it is made of people who can never fully know the good that they have done. Tracy Kidder humanity together people 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. Tracy Kidder sick-world writing book among a coward's weapons, cynicism is the nastiest of all Tracy Kidder coward cynicism weapons Things were here before you and will be here after you're gone. The geographic features, especially, give you a sense of your own place in the world and in time Tracy Kidder gone house giving The only real nation is humanity Tracy Kidder interdependence real humanity That's when I feel most alive, he told me once on an airplane, when I'm helping people. Tracy Kidder airplane alive people 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. Tracy Kidder hard-work mind writing ... "You may not see the ocean, but right now we are in the middle of the ocean, and we have to keep swimming. Tracy Kidder swimming ocean may The goofiness of radicals thinking they have to dress in Guatemalan peasant clothes. The poor don't want you to look like them. They want you to dress in a suit and go get them food and water. Comma. Tracy Kidder clothes water thinking What I like about non-fiction is that it covers such a huge territory. The best non-fiction is also creative Tracy Kidder creativity creative fiction What interests me is trying to catch the reflection of the human being on the page. I'm interested in how ordinary people live their lives Tracy Kidder reflection trying people You can write about anything, and if you write well enough, even the reader with no intrinsic interest in the subject will become involved. Tracy Kidder interest enough writing In order to go on with our lives, we are always capable of making the ominous into the merely strange. Tracy Kidder strange goes-on order And I can imagine Farmer saying he doesn't care if no one else is willing to follow their example. He's still going to make these hikes, he'd insist, because if you say that seven hours is too long to walk for two families of patients, you're saying that their lives matter less than some others', and the idea that some lives matter less is the root of all that's wrong with the world. Tracy Kidder roots two ideas
