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If you never know hardship, you can't really support people around you.

Some folks believe that hardship breeds artistic creativity. I don't buy it. One can put up with poverty for a while when one is young, but it will inevitably wear a person down.

I think we're programmed for hardship. In my experience, human beings are happiest when they're working themselves to the bone. People are more likely to feel adrift and unsatisfied when they have too much leisure time. Obstacles are good.

A lot of what is most beautiful about the world arises from struggle.

The world of the homeless is a tough and interesting world.

Not surprisingly, troubled economic times often beget proselytizers of wacky, extreme ideas.

It is when I struggle to be brief that I become obscure.

It's hard for me to understand how poverty can be invisible to so many people, since I see it everywhere. Readers sometimes think this world is so different; on the one hand, they feel connected to the people I'm writing about, and on the other hand, they're saying their lives are a world away.