Tracy Kidder

“Nothing every happens unless you push it. Ed Rasala. 111”

— Tracy Kidder

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

— Tracy Kidder

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

— Tracy Kidder

“Beyond mountains there are mountains.” - Haitian proverb”

— Tracy Kidder

People say you cant teach writing, but I think thats nonsense.

— Tracy Kidder

Writing is revision. All prose responds to work.

— Tracy Kidder

“god gives but does not share" --haitian proverb”

— Tracy Kidder

The only real nation is humanity

— Tracy Kidder

If you live in the same small place long enough, something you don't like is bound to happen

— Tracy Kidder

I wrote a novel about the combat experiences I didn't have in Vietnam.

— Tracy Kidder

“If two smart and logical people disagree it's because they are acting on different information”

— Tracy Kidder

I'm going to a commune in Vermont and will deal with no unit of time shorter than a season.

— Tracy Kidder

“Dokte Paul works with both hands” — that is, both with science and with the magic necessary to remove ensorcellments.”

— Tracy Kidder

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

— Tracy Kidder

The combination of domesticity and wildness - that's a deep expression

— Tracy Kidder

Public education rests precariously on the skill and virtue of the people at the bottom of the institutional pyramid.

— Tracy Kidder

In the early days, computers inspired widespread awe and the popular press dubbed them giant brains. In fact, the computer's power resembled…

— Tracy Kidder

“How to preside over your own internal disorder? Finding the "I" that can represent the pack of you is the first challenge…

— Tracy Kidder

In a very basic way, a prominent landmark such as Mt. Holyoke tells you where you are. They let you know that…

— Tracy Kidder

What interests me is trying to catch the reflection of the human being on the page. I'm interested in how ordinary people…

— Tracy Kidder

I am grateful to Stacy Schiff first of all because she can write a sentence-because she offers us her scholarship with wit,…

— Tracy Kidder

The problem is fundamental... It is as if a secret committee, now lost to history, has made a study of children and,…

— Tracy Kidder

The goofiness of radicals thinking they have to dress in Guatemalan peasant clothes. The poor don't want you to look like them.…

— Tracy Kidder

“Farmer liked to tell his Harvard students that to be a good clinician you must never let a patient know that you…

— Tracy Kidder

“He recites the names of the trees, vines, shrubs, flowers that he’s planted here over the years. I count about forty different…

— Tracy Kidder

Many people find it easy to imagine unseen webs of malevolent conspiracy in the world, and they are not always wrong. But…

— Tracy Kidder

“I think Farmer taps into a universal anxiety and also into a fundamental place in some troubled consciences, into what he calls…

— Tracy Kidder

And I can imagine Farmer saying he doesn't care if no one else is willing to follow their example. He's still going…

— Tracy Kidder

Most teachers have little control over school policy or curriculum or choice of texts or special placement of students, but most have…

— Tracy Kidder

“Children get dealt grossly unequal hands, but that is all the more reason to treat them equally in school, Chris thought. "I…

— Tracy Kidder

“Paul's face grew serious. 'I think whenever a people has enormous resources, it is easy for them to call themselves democratic. I…

— Tracy Kidder

“[Farmer] went to dozens of American and Canadian universities and colleges, preaching his O for the P [Preferential Option for the Poor]…

— Tracy Kidder

“One time I listened to Farmer give a talk on HIV to a class at the Harvard School of Public Health, and…

— Tracy Kidder

among a coward's weapons, cynicism is the nastiest of all

— Tracy Kidder

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

— Tracy Kidder

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

— Tracy Kidder

“Money is a fictional thing that is supposed to go around. Hoarding it is a sin”

— Tracy Kidder

Curing yourself of obsessive compulsive disorder by going to a strip club is pretty strange.

— Tracy Kidder

My big struggle is how people can not care, erase, not remember.

— Tracy Kidder

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

— Tracy Kidder