Tracy Kidder Quotes

Quotes about:

• Writing is revision. All prose responds to work.

  Tracy Kidder

  Writing, Revision, Prose

  Tracy Kidder, Richard Todd (2013). “Good Prose: The Art of Nonfiction”, p.19, Random House

  47 Copy quote

• 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

  Inspiring, Spring, Adventure

  29 Copy quote

• 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

  Life, Inspire, Purpose

  22 Copy quote

• 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

  Teacher, Teaching, School

  Tracy Kidder (1989). “Among School Children”, p.59, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  20 Copy quote

• 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

  Men, Giving, Needs

  20 Copy quote

• 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

  People, Humanity, Together

  Tracy Kidder (1989). “Among School Children”, p.320, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  12 Copy quote

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

  Tracy Kidder

  Vermont, Deals, Units

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  Giving, House, Gone

  9 Copy quote

• The only real nation is humanity

  Tracy Kidder

  Real, Humanity, Interdependence

  Tracy Kidder (2003). “Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World”, p.241, Random House

  7 Copy quote

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

  Tracy Kidder

  Coward, Weapons, Cynicism

  Tracy Kidder (2003). “Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World”, p.241, Random House

  10 Copy quote

• 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

  Book, Writing, Sick World

  13 Copy quote

• ...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

  Goal, Imitation, Emphasis

  Tracy Kidder (2003). “Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World”, p.278, Random House

  7 Copy quote

• When writers stop believing in their own stories, readers tend to sense it.

  Tracy Kidder

  Believe, Stories, Reader

  Tracy Kidder, Richard Todd (2013). “Good Prose: The Art of Nonfiction”, p.81, Random House

  4 Copy quote

• 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, Writing, Mind

  9 Copy quote

• 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

  Ideas, Two, Roots

  Tracy Kidder (2003). “Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World”, p.338, Random House

  8 Copy quote

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

  Tracy Kidder

  Teacher, Skills, Pyramids

  Tracy Kidder (1989). “Among School Children”, p.59, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  8 Copy quote

• That's when I feel most alive, he told me once on an airplane, when I'm helping people.

  Tracy Kidder

  Airplane, People, Alive

  Tracy Kidder (2003). “Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World”, p.338, Random House

  7 Copy quote

• Paul Farmer has helped to build amazing health care system in one of the poorest areas of Haiti. He founded Partners in Health, which serves the destitute and the sick in many parts of the world from Haiti to Boston and from Russia to Peru.

  Tracy Kidder

  Russia, Boston, Sick

  17 Copy quote

• The problem is fundamental... It is as if a secret committee, now lost to history, has made a study of children and, having figured out what the greatest number were least disposed to declared that all of them should do it.

  Tracy Kidder

  Children, Numbers, Secret

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  7 Copy quote

• ... "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

  Ocean, Swimming, May

  Tracy Kidder (2009). “Strength in What Remains”, Random House

  4 Copy quote

• In order to go on with our lives, we are always capable of making the ominous into the merely strange.

  Tracy Kidder

  Order, Goes On, Strange

  Tracy Kidder (2009). “Strength in What Remains”, p.111, Random House

  8 Copy quote

• 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, People, Trying

  7 Copy quote

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

  Tracy Kidder

  Glasses, Want, Clear

  7 Copy quote

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

  Tracy Kidder

  Believe, Thinking, Important

  4 Copy quote

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