104 Quotes by Katherine Boo

A decent life was the train that hadn’t hit you, the slumlord you hadn’t offended, the malaria you hadn’t caught

...much of what was said did not matter, and that much of what mattered could not be said.

My job is to lay it out clearly, not to give my policy prescriptions.Very little journalism is world changing. But if change is to happen, it will be because people with power have a better sense of what’s happening to people who have none.

But if writing about people who are not yourself is illegitimate, then the only legitimate work is autobiography; and as a reader and a citizen, I don’t want to live in that world.

Everything on television announced a new and better India for women. Her favorite Tamil soap opera was about an educated single girl who worked in an office. In her favorite commercials, a South Indian movie siren named Asin was recommending, along with Mirinda orange soda, more fun, a little wildness. This new India of feisty, convention-defying women wasn’t a place Meena knew how to get to.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Never trust anyone who tells you how people come to trust them.

What you don’t want is always going to be with you What you want is never going to be with you Where you don’t want to go, you have to go And the moment you think you’re going to live more, you’re going to die.

Water and ice were made of the same thing. He thought most people were made of the same thing, too.

So do I have to teach you all over again how to make the rotis round?” Asha teased her daughter, merrily holding one of them up. “Come on! Who will marry you when you make such ridiculous bread?” The.