I wrote a novel about the combat experiences I didn't have in Vietnam.

I always want to write something better than the last book.

I think if the writing comes too easily, it shows - it's usually hard to read.

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.

Things were here before you and will be here after you're gone. The geographic features, especially, give you a sense of your own place in the world and in time.

I tell beginning readers to read a lot and write a lot. If you want to write a book, find a subject that's really worth the time and effort you'll put in.

I want my prose to be as clear as a pane of glass.

I know that to write you have to have stories you want to tell. You have to keep your mind alive, and you have to work hard.

Continuity is one of the things I like about New England.

If you had an essentially happy childhood, that tends to dwell with you.

If you live in the same small place long enough, something you don't like is bound to happen.

I never planned on doing a book about Paul Farmer or his organization. I met him in Haiti when I was on a magazine assignment. It's almost like his story sort of fell in my lap.

People say you can't teach writing, but I think that's nonsense.

In a very basic way, a prominent landmark such as Mt. Holyoke tells you where you are. They let you know that you're not the first person in a place.

What I like about non-fiction is that it covers such a huge territory. The best non-fiction is also creative.

The combination of domesticity and wildness - that's a deep expression.

I wrote a novel about the combat experiences I didn't have in Vietnam.

When I select a topic, it's usually a commitment of two to three years of my life.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Being a professional writer is not an easy way to make a living.

The hardest thing was learning to write. I was 13, and the only writing I had done was for Social Studies. It consisted of copying passages right out of the encyclopedia.

I do believe that enduring geological features are important, though I don't think I can be clear about exactly why.

Writing is revision. All prose responds to work.

Don't worry about being worried. You're heading out on an adventure and you can always change your mind along the way and try something else.

After the 1954 Geneva international conference, Vietnam was divided into two parts. On paper, North and South Vietnam were twin countries born at the same moment.

Back in the old Corp, we weren't training those privates to infiltrate into the peacetime Marine Corp. We were training those privates to go to Vietnam.

If John Kerry had a dollar for every time he bragged about serving in Vietnam - oh wait, he does.

When it came to political power, blacks need not apply. Add to this steaming stew the growing tensions over the Vietnam War and the movement for civil rights, and you had plenty of elements to fire the imagination of a novice journalist.

But although Australia was also involved in the Vietnam conflict, I can remember my dad telling us that if we were in Australia, we wouldn't be drafted until we were 20.

There are two types of courage involved with what I did. When it comes to picking up a rifle, millions of people are capable of doing that, as we see in Iraq or Vietnam. But when it comes to risking their careers, or risking being invited to lunch by the establishment, it turns out that's remarkably rare.

I did three tours in Vietnam. I guess a total of about almost two years.

Our purpose in Vietnam is to prevent the success of aggression. It is not conquest, it is not empire, it is not foreign bases, it is not domination. It is, simply put, just to prevent the forceful conquest of South Vietnam by North Vietnam.

By the end of the summer of 1973 I thought it was virtually impossible for South Vietnam to survive. How in the heck could they?

We should declare war on North Vietnam. We could pave the whole country and put parking strips on it, and still be home by Christmas.

If the Mets can win the World Series, the United States can get out of Vietnam.

The Vietnam War required us to emphasize the national interest rather than abstract principles. What President Nixon and I tried to do was unnatural. And that is why we didn't make it.

Although I wasn't able to get a visa for Vietnam, I was able to talk with swift boat veterans to get a feel for the time and place, and I visited a tropical prison in the Philippines to get a sense of what a Vietnamese prison might have been like.

Thank you for the sacrifices you and your families are making. Our Vietnam Veterans have taught us that no matter what are positions may be on policy, as Americans and patriots, we must support all of our soldiers with our thoughts and our prayers.

No event in American history is more misunderstood than the Vietnam War. It was misreported then, and it is misremembered now.

After Watergate, America was a ship without a rudder. Vietnam was left to its own devices, drifting along towards its fate.

I saw courage both in the Vietnam War and in the struggle to stop it. I learned that patriotism includes protest, not just military service.

By the mid-sixties, the United States had poured more than half a million troops into South Vietnam.

George W. had a plan. He arranged to join the Air National Guard in Texas, which meant he would not be sent to Vietnam.

At least I'm at peace with myself. I have done my best to write a book about what really happened there and why it happened and it's done, it's published. I won't write another book on Vietnam.

I remember the day I found out my draft status. I was really floored and kind of staggered around in a daze. It just hadn't occurred to me that I could end up in Vietnam.

John Kerry's service did not end in Vietnam. It began there.