104 Quotes by Katherine Boo

What, exactly, she had been protesting was subject to interpretation. To the poorest, her self-immolation was a response to enervating poverty. To the disabled, it reflected the lack of respect accorded the physically impaired. To the unhappily married, who were legion, it was a brave indictment of oppressive unions. Almost no one spoke of envy, a stone slab, a poorly made wall, or rubble that had fallen into rice.

His general approach toward his neighbors was this: 'The better I know you, the more I will dislike you, and the more you will dislike me. So let us keep to ourselves.

Rich people’s garbage was every year more complex, rife with hybrid materials, impurities, impostors. Planks that looked like wood were shot through with plastic. How was he to classify a loofah? The owners of the recycling plants demanded waste that was all one thing, pure.

Midnight was closing in, the one-legged woman was grievously burned, and the Mumbai police were coming for Abdul and his father.

But Karam wasn't about to explain the economics of reprieve to his traumatized son.

I hear of this love so often that I think I know it, but I don't feel it, and I myself don't know why,' he fretted. 'These people who love and then the girlfriend goes away - they cut their arms with a blade, they put a cigarette butt out on their hand, they won't sleep, they won't eat, they'll sing - they must have different hearts than mine.

People naturally long for a bit of the wealth that is whorling all around them, and if the work and education available to them won't get them closer to the comforts that they see others enjoying, the temptation to take shortcuts can be fierce.

One thing that was very clear to me is that the young people in a place like Annawadi aren't tripping on caste the way their parents are. They know their parents have these old views.

I was spending a lot of time in Mumbai after I met my husband, who is Indian, and while parts of the city were prospering like crazy, I couldn't quite make out how the new wealth had changed the prospects of the majority of city residents who lived in slums. So after a few years I stopped wondering and started reporting.