"When I select a topic, it's usually a commitment of two to three years of my life."

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More quotes from: Tracy Kidder

• "Andover was like a monastery back then. We worked all the time. The hazing was ..."
• "At first, I spend about four hours a day writing. Toward the end of a ..."
• "At the time I began writing the book about Northampton, I had recently been in ..."
• "Being a professional writer is not an easy way to make a living. "
• "Continuity is one of the things I like about New England. "
• "Curing yourself of obsessive compulsive disorder by going to a strip club is pretty strange. "
• "I always want to write something better than the last book. "
• "I can look into parts of the world I don't understand and don't know about, ..."
• "I can't invent stuff, but the techniques fiction writers use to create character and suspense ..."
• "I do believe that enduring geological features are important, though I don't think I can ..."
• "I grew up in Long Island, a place that vanished in front of my eyes. ..."
• "I have many thoughts about the view from Mt. Holyoke. It hasn't really changed very ..."
• "I know that to write you have to have stories you want to tell. You ..."
• "I like particular people, particular places. "
• "I make an index of my notes and then get to the writing as soon ..."
• "I never planned on doing a book about Paul Farmer or his organization. I met ..."
• "I tell beginning readers to read a lot and write a lot. If you want ..."
• "I think if the writing comes too easily, it shows-it's usually hard to read. "
• "I think there's a certain level of decency and honor. "
• "I usually write about ordinary people and ordinary things, but Paul Farmer is the least ..."
• "I want my prose to be as clear as a pane of glass. "

• "I wanted some way to invite readers in, to set the stage for the book ..."
• "I wanted to stay with my friends on Long Island, but I finally agreed to ..."
• "I went to Iowa to learn how to write fiction, but when I got there ..."
• "I would read and write all night long and, as a result, wound up cutting ..."
• "I wrote a novel about the combat experiences I didn't have in Vietnam. "
• "I'm a little suspicious of the great, overarching view. It always leaves something out. "
• "I'm sickened by strip malls, gated communities, decaying, dying old downtowns. We've lost that sense ..."
• "If you had an essentially happy childhood, that tends to dwell with you. "
• "If you live in the same small place long enough, something you don't like is ..."
• "In a very basic way, a prominent landmark such as Mt. Holyoke tells you where ..."
• "It's important to hang around with people for a while, let people know what they're ..."
• "Memory is so much a part of imagination, so plastic, so wonderfully plastic. "
• "New Journalism was such the rage with authors like Tom Wolfe and John McPhee. All ..."
• "Northampton has layers and layers. I saw a whole side of it I didn't know, ..."
• "One of the things I wanted you to feel in this book, when you were ..."
• "Painting the landscape was, in a sense, another means of exerting control, of imposing order ..."
• "Paul Farmer has helped to build amazing health care system in one of the poorest ..."
• "People say you can't teach writing, but I think that's nonsense. "
• "Returning to Northampton, I thought: here's a town that seems to be working pretty well, ..."
• "Right now I'm really researching for a good non-fiction story... I doubt that I'll ever ..."

• "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 ..."
• "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 ..."
• "The subject of this book, Paul Farmer, came along at a time in my life ..."
• "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 ..."
• "The world doesn't make much sense to me generally. I don't feel like I'm good ..."
• "Things were here before you and will be here after you're gone. The geographic features, ..."
• "We shouldn't forget how terrifying untamed landscape was to early settlers. From their perspective, mankind ..."
• "What I like about non-fiction is that it covers such a huge territory. The best ..."
• "What I was trying to suggest... was the intrigue that is always hidden in a ..."
• "What interests me is trying to catch the reflection of the human being on the ..."
• "You do the right thing even if it makes you feel bad. The purpose of ..."
• "You don't get far with people by judging them, and one of the nice things ..."