Katherine Boo Quotes

Katherine Boo — American Journalist born on August 12, 1964,

Katherine "Kate" J. Boo is an American investigative journalist who has documented the lives of people in poverty. She has won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, the MacArthur "genius" award, and the National Book Award for Nonfiction. She has been a staff writer for the New Yorker magazine since 2003. Her book Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity won nonfiction prizes from PEN, the Los Angeles Times Book Awards, the New York Public Library, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters, in addition to the National Book Award for Nonfiction... (wikipedia)

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.

In any country, corruption tends to increase when more respectable means of social advancement break down.

For myself, suffering doesnt make me a good person; it makes me selfish. Why do we think that people who have less should find it edifying?

People talk about places like Mumbai as a tale of two cities, as if the rich and poor don't have anything to do with each other.