Painting the landscape was, in a sense, another means of exerting control, of imposing order on the disorderly. |
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. |
People say you can't teach writing, but I think that's nonsense. |
PIH combines idealism and brilliance to a degree I've never witnessed before in the public charity arena, |
Returning to Northampton, I thought: here's a town that seems to be working pretty well, and I wonder why. |
Right now I'm really researching for a good non-fiction story... I doubt that I'll ever find a subject like Paul Farmer ever again. |
Sports were crucial. Looking forward to those games could get you through the week. |
Suddenly the idea of being a writer seemed much more romantic-and a great way to impress girls. |
That thing got pretty rusty, |
The combination of domesticity and wildness - that's a deep expression. |
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 passages right out of the encyclopedia. |
The subject of this book, Paul Farmer, came along at a time in my life when I was feeling more and more cynical about such global problems as AIDS. |
The underside of a town as nice as Northampton can still be pretty gritty. |
The view from the summit of Mt. Holyoke has been one of the most famous landscapes in America. And yet, all these things are going on underneath. |
The world doesn't make much sense to me generally. I don't feel like I'm good at that. |