Tracy Kidder

“Never worry about theory as long as the machinery does what it's supposed to do.”

“It's easy to dismiss a hero as a saint. It's also a lazy way to fail to see yourself in anyone else.”

“I was looking for the meaning of life, and then I was looking for a place to live.”

“We are all of us in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”

“Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader—not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.”

“Many of the good things in life are a side effect of trying to do something else.”

“It’s what you do that makes your soul.”

“The world is full of people who are not heroes but who do heroic things.”

“The essence of a good deed is that it is done for its own sake.”

“The only way to do a thing is to do it.”

“A lot of us are looking for the same thing. It's peace. It's a certain kind of happiness.”

“Most of what is best in writing isn't done deliberately.”

“The thing that's worth doing is the thing that you could fail at.”