Katherine Boo

Literary Birthday – 12 August – Katherine Boo

Happy Birthday, Katherine Boo, born 12 August 1964.

Five Quotes

  1. 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.
  2. We often have an exaggerated sense of what non profits and governments are doing to help the poor, but the really inspiring thing is how much the poor are doing to help themselves.
  3. The astonishing thing is that some people are good, and that many others try to be.
  4. 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.
  5. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Never trust anyone who tells you how people come to trust him.

Katherine Boo is an American investigative journalist. She has won numerous prizes including the National Book Award for Non-fiction for her book Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity.

Image source

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Katherine_boo_4180016.jpg

Slowking4, GFDL 1.2 <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/fdl-1.2.html>, via Wikimedia Commons

Amanda Patterson by Amanda Patterson

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Posted on: 12th August 2015
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