Tracy Kidder Quotes

58 quotes in 734 categories

• When I select a topic, it's usually a commitment of two to three years of my life
• The hardest thing was learning to write. I was 13, and the only writing I had done was for Social Studies. It consisted of copying…
• If you live in the same small place long enough, something you don't like is bound to happen
• What I like about non-fiction is that it covers such a huge territory. The best non-fiction is also creative
• The only real nation is humanity
• Writing is revision. All prose responds to work.
• 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…
• If you had an essentially happy childhood, that tends to dwell with you.
• 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…
• The ocean doesn't care about you. It makes your boat feel tiny. The oceans are great promoters of religion, or at least of humility-but not…
• Obviously, computers have made differences. They have fostered the development of spaceships- as well as a great increase in junk mail.
• In the early days, computers inspired widespread awe and the popular press dubbed them giant brains. In fact, the computer's power resembled that of a…
• Being a professional writer is not an easy way to make a living.
• Continuity is one of the things I like about New England.
• 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.…
• 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…
• 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…
• 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…
• 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…
• In order to go on with our lives, we are always capable of making the ominous into the merely strange.

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