Quote

At first, I spend about four hours a day writing. Toward the end of a book, I spend up to 16 hours a day on it, because all I want to do is make it good and get it done.

Tracy Kidder

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Tracy Kidder
Age: 79
Born: 1945
Born: November 12
Writer
New York City
New York
John Tracy Kidder
Good
Hours
Ends
Firsts
Book
First
Done
Toward
Writing
Spend
Make
Four

More quotes by Tracy Kidder

Image
The only real nation is humanity
Tracy Kidder
Image
What interests me is trying to catch the reflection of the human being on the page. I'm interested in how ordinary people live their lives
Tracy Kidder
Image
Paul Farmer has helped to build amazing health care system in one of the poorest areas of Haiti. He founded Partners in Health, which serves the destitute and the sick in many parts of the world from Haiti to Boston and from Russia to Peru.
Tracy Kidder
Image
In order to go on with our lives, we are always capable of making the ominous into the merely strange.
Tracy Kidder
Image
I usually write about ordinary people and ordinary things, but Paul Farmer is the least ordinary person I've ever met... He's the leader of a small group of people who hope to cure a sick world, and I hope my book can help in some small way.
Tracy Kidder
Image
I wrote a novel about the combat experiences I didn't have in Vietnam.
Tracy Kidder
Image
I'm going to a commune in Vermont and will deal with no unit of time shorter than a season.
Tracy Kidder
Image
Being a professional writer is not an easy way to make a living.
Tracy Kidder
Image
I always want to write something better than the last book.
Tracy Kidder
Image
Curing yourself of obsessive compulsive disorder by going to a strip club is pretty strange.
Tracy Kidder
Image
My big struggle is how people can not care, erase, not remember.
Tracy Kidder
Image
You do the right thing even if it makes you feel bad. The purpose of life is not to be happy but to be worthy of happiness.
Tracy Kidder
Image
Public education rests precariously on the skill and virtue of the people at the bottom of the institutional pyramid.
Tracy Kidder
Image
I am grateful to Stacy Schiff first of all because she can write a sentence-because she offers us her scholarship with wit, clarity, and grace. Once again, she has done what only the best writers can do: she has made the world new, again.
Tracy Kidder
Image
When writers stop believing in their own stories, readers tend to sense it.
Tracy Kidder
Image
Continuity is one of the things I like about New England.
Tracy Kidder
Image
I do believe in God. I think God has given so much power to people, and intelligence, and said, 'Well, you are on your own. Maybe I'm tired, I need a nap. You are mature. Why don't you look after yourselves?' And I think He's been sleeping too much.
Tracy Kidder
Image
You can write about anything, and if you write well enough, even the reader with no intrinsic interest in the subject will become involved.
Tracy Kidder
Image
When I select a topic, it's usually a commitment of two to three years of my life
Tracy Kidder
Image
The goofiness of radicals thinking they have to dress in Guatemalan peasant clothes. The poor don't want you to look like them. They want you to dress in a suit and go get them food and water. Comma.
Tracy Kidder