We judge ourselves, we reach conclusions about how good we are, not by comparing ourselves to the world, but by comparing ourselves to those people immediately around us - people in the same room as us. So the kids at Harvard University, who are among the smartest students in the world, but who are at the bottom third of the class, feel dumb. They feel exactly as dumb as the bottom third of the class at East Tennessee State. Once you grasp that fact that our judgments are relative, you understand that, if that's the case, then an elite school's not a good idea for someone who's going to be at the bottom of his class.

I don't want people to be poor so they can learn character virtues, but, given that the world is always inevitably going to be full of suffering, we should at least understand that some of that suffering has a purpose and a function and a happy ending, that's all.

When you want to understand why Davids defeat Goliaths, you can't just tell a story in terms of material advantages. You have to understand that there is going to be sleight of hand, and trickery and clever turns, and that games will be played. What Martin Luther King's people, principally this guy Wyatt Walker, were doing at the climactic showdown of the civil rights revolution in Birmingham, Alabama, was playing a trick. Walker played a trick on all of us..when he used the children and the fire hoses. I think there's something kind of beautiful, beautiful and heroic about that.

People will comply with laws when the laws make sense, and if they don't make sense, it is incumbent on those in power to fix them, not just ask for blind compliance because you're the powerful party. The world doesn't work that way.

I always think of my books as an ongoing conversation with myself and others and that people have without me. My hope about my books is that they will be dropped in the middle of these conversations and inspire new lines of inquiry. In no case have I reached a firm position a 'This is what, absolutely, I think'. I feel these are all things that need to be said and thought and raised [and] that I'll be toying with for the rest of my life.