Barbara Kingsolver quote: "When you pick up a novel from the bed side table, you put down your own life at the same time and you become another person for the duration."

Wars and elections are both too big and too small to matter in the long run. The daily work - that g...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Small change, small wonders - these are the currency of my endurance and ultimately of my life.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Empathy is really the opposite of spiritual meanness. It's the capacity to understand that every...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Stop a minute, right where you are. Relax your shoulders, shake your head and spine like a dog shaki...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

The important thing isn't the house. It's the ability to make it. You carry that in your bra...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

The first sentence of a book is a promise.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

For me, writing time has always been precious, something I wait for and am eager for and make the be...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Terms like that, 'Humane Society,' are devised with people like me in mind, who don't ca...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Readers of fiction read, I think, for a deeper embrace of the world, of reality. And that's brav...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

What you lose in blindness is the space around you, the place where you are, and without that you mi...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

I think the most interesting parts of human experience might be the sparks that come from that sort ...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

I'm of a fearsome mind to throw my arms around every living librarian who crosses my path, on be...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

To be hopeful, to embrace one possibility after another that is surely the basic instinct - crying o...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Motherhood is so sentimentalised and romanticised in our culture. It's practically against the l...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Good fiction creates empathy. A novel takes you somewhere and asks you to look through the eyes of a...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

What keeps you going isn't some fine destination but just the road you're on, and the fact t...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

It's surprising how much memory is built around things unnoticed at the time.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Memory is a complicated thing, a relative to truth, but not its twin.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

What a writer can do, what a fiction writer or a poet or an essay writer can do is re-engage people ...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Few people know so clearly what they want. Most people can't even think what to hope for when th...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do i...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

But kids don't stay with you if you do it right. It's the one job where, the better you are, the mor...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

There is no point treating a depressed person as though she were just feeling sad, saying, 'There no...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is l...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

It is surprising how much of memory is built around things unnoticed at the time.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do i...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Until that moment I'd thought I could have it both ways; to be one of them, and also my husband's wi...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Mama always said barefoot and pregnant was not my style. She knew.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

People's dreams are made out of what they do all day. The same way a dog that runs after rabbits...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Sometimes the strength of motherhood is greater than natural laws.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

The older I get, the more I appreciate my rural childhood. I spent a lot of time outdoors, unsupervi...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

The truth needs so little rehearsal.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

As a biologist, I can't think of myself as anything but an animal among animals and plant.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

I can count all the ways in which being a mother has enriched my understanding of the world, of char...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Pain reaches the heart with electrical speed, but truth moves to the heart as slowly as a glacier.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

I think the most interesting parts of human experience might be the sparks that come from that sort ...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Southern Appalachians have been ridiculed since the country began. In fiction, they're usually d...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Like kids who only ever get socks for Christmas, but still believe with all their hearts in Santa.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

I used to think religion was just more of the same thing. Dump responsibility on the big guy. Now I ...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Hallie and I... were all there was. The image in the mirror that proves you are still here. We had e...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

That would be Axelroot all over, to turn up with an extra wife or two claiming that's how they do it...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

The last generations's worst fears become the next one's B-grade entertainment.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

My morning begins with trying not to get up before the sun rises. But when I do, it's because my...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Illusions mistaken for truth are the pavement under our feet. They are what we call civilization.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

When something extraordinary shows up in your life in the middle of the night, you give it a name an...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

I love developing children as characters. Children rarely have important roles in literary fiction -...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

The friend who holds your hand and says the wrong thing is made of dearer stuff than the one who sta...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

But newspapers have a duty to truth,' Van said.
Lev clucked his tongue. 'They tell the truth on...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

In a world as wrong as this one, all we can do is make things as right as we can.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

You always need that spark of imagination. Sometimes I'm midway through a book before it happens...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

There's a graveyard in northern France where all the dead boys from D-Day are buried. The white cros...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

So you make this deal with the gods. You do these dances and they'll send rain and good crops and th...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

In Kilanga, people knew nothing of things they might have had - a Frigidaire? a washer-dryer combina...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Shoes would interfere with her conversation, for she constantly addresses the ground under her feet....
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

To live is to change, to acquire the words of a story, and that is the only celebration we mortals r...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

It's frightening when things you love appear suddenly changed from what you have always known.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

No other continent has endured such an unspeakably bizarre combination of foreign thievery and forei...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

I live in southern Appalachia, so I'm surrounded by people who work very hard for barely a livin...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

We're animals. We're born like every other mammal and we live our whole lives around disguis...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

God doesn’t need to punish us. He just grants us a long enough life to punish ourselves.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Everything you're sure is right can be wrong in another place.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

The important thing isn't the house. It's the ability to make it. You carry that in your brains and ...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Close the door. Write with _no one_ looking over your shoulder. Don't try to figure out what other p...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Terms like that, "Humane Society," are devised with people like me in mind, who don't care to dwell ...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

A first child is your own best foot forward, and how you do cheer those little feet as they strike o...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

I'm of a fearsome mind to throw my arms around every living librarian who crosses my path, on behalf...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

People's dreams are made out of what they do all day. The same way a dog that runs after rabbits wil...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

I could never work out whether we were to view religion as a life-insurance policy or a life sentenc...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

He spoke for an hour on the nonviolent road to independence. The crowd loved it so much they rioted ...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Patriotism threatens free speech with death. In other words, the American flag stands for intimidati...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Libraries are the one American institution you shouldn't rip off.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Come to think of it, just about every tool was shaped like either a weenie or a pistol, depending on...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

I’ve seen how you can’t learn anything when you’re trying to look like the smartest person in ...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Sympathizing over the behavior of men is the baking soda of women's friendships, it seems,the thing ...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Do you think its possible to live without wanting to put your name on your paintings? To belong to a...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

If men only knew, modesty makes women fall in love faster than all the cock-a-doodling in the world.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

It occurs to her that there is one thing about people you can never understand well enough: how enti...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Anybody can get worked up, if they have the intention. It's peacefulness that is hard to come by on ...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

The thing is, it's my own fault. I just can't put up with a person that won't go out of his way for ...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

No matter what kind of night you're having, morning always wins.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Last time I talked to her she didn't sound like herself. She's depressed. It's awful what happens wh...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

God, why does a mortal man have children? It is senseless to love anything this much.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Soon the maroon-throated howls would echo back from the other trees, father down the beach, until th...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

When people are frightened about going hungry and paying their mortgages, a scarcity model begins to...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

WOMEN ON THEIR OWN RUN in Alice’s family. This dawns on her with the unkindness of a heart attack ...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Then again, do you have to be told every single thing about the world before you know it?
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

The backs of his hands remind him of paper burning in the fireplace, the moment the taut membrane go...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Cash misses his wife with a blank pain in his chest, and he misses his sisters and cousins, who have...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

She told him television was a bad influence. Probably she was right. Like those white birds he's bee...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Let's go take a walk down to the blue hole. You need to look at some water.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

She climbs down and pours half an inch of Jim Beam into a Bengals mug that came free with a tank of ...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

They rock against each other, holding on, and the birds in the forest raise their voices to drown ou...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

I've just fallen on some bad luck and landed jelly side down.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

The clock gulps softly, eating second whole while she waits...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

You talk about her as if she is the Notre Dame Cathedral!" "She is. And the Statue of Liberty and Ab...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

I was so depressed I stopped using hair spray for three weeks.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

She married him two years ago for love, or so she thought, and he's a good enough man but a devotee ...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

I’m always looking at the dialectic between the truth we believe exists outside ourselves and the ...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Alice hands Annawake a handkerchief. Young people never carry them, she's noticed. They haven't yet ...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

She understands all at once, with a small shock, exactly what it is she always needed to tell Harlan...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

The obstinate practicality of old women pierces and fortifies these families like the steel rods bur...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

A woman knows she can walk away from a pot to tend something else and the pot will go on boiling; if...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

It's monstrous, what one person will do to another.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

She has changed in this way that motherhood changes you, so that you forget you ever had time for sm...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

You could love your crazy people, even admire them, instead of resenting that they're not self-suffi...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

He lifts her breasts, which fit perfectly into his hands, though he knows this is no promise that he...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Be sweet and carry a sharp knife, was her motto.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

He was my father. I own half his genes, and all of his history. Believe this: the mistakes are part ...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

I know what it is: it's a green mamba snake away up in the tree. You don't have to be afraid of them...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

What a rich wisdom it would be, and how much more bountiful a harvest, to gain pleasure not from ach...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

What there is in this world, I think, is a tendency for human errors to level themselves like water ...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Finally Cub said, "They don't call it global weirding."
"I know. But I think that's actually th...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

restraint equals indulgence
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

It is harrowing for me to try to teach 20-year-old students, who earnestly want to improve their wri...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

It kills you to see them grow up. But I guess it would kill you quicker if they didn't.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

It's surprising how much of memory is built around things unnoticed at the time
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Few people know so clearly what they want. Most people can't even think what to hope for when they t...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

What keeps you going isn't some fine destination but just the road you're on, and the fact that you ...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Why does a person even get up in the morning? You have breakfast, you floss your teeth so you'll hav...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

In my own worst seasons I've come back from the colorless world of despair by forcing myself to look...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

I was trained in classical piano, but it kind of dawned on me that classical pianists compete for si...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Mistakes wreck your life. But they make what you have. It's kind of all one. You know what Hester to...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

There can be no greater spiritual accomplishment than to come through brutal trials and then look ba...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

If you can't live by the laws the LORD God made for the world, they'll go into effect regardless.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

always tried to be positive with her, although I’d learned
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

A disappointed-looking Jesus eyed her from the wall...Look, look, her steps called out, here is a re...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

If people really gave it full consideration, I mean, like if you could return a baby after thirty da...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

She made it plain that her fondest wish was to have a grandbaby. Whenever fat Irene would pick up th...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Do you know, I spent the first half of my life avoiding motherhood and tires, and now I’m counting...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

There is no point in treating a depressed person as though she were just feeling sad, saying, There ...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

When I was Turtle’s age I had never had anyone or anything important taken from me. I still hadn�...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

I never could figure out why men thought they could impress a woman by making the world out to be su...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

We do have some strong traditions of community in the United States, but it’s interesting to me th...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

That means you're my kid," I explained, "and I'm your mother, and nobody can say it isn't so.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

I have been afraid of putting air in a tire ever since I saw a tractor tire blow up and throw Newt H...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

So one time when I was working in this motel one of the toilets leaked and I had to replace the flap...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

It was hard to feel the remotest sympathy for any of the different fools she'd been. As opposed to t...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Whatever you want the most, it’s going to be the worst thing for you.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Mi'ija, in a world as wrong as this one, all we can do is to make things as right as we can.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

You think you're the foreigner here, and I'm the American, and I just look the other way while the P...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

I’ve been thinking about that. About how your kids aren’t really yours, they’re just these peo...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. The most you can do is li...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

You're asking yourself, Can I give this child the best possible upbringing and keep her out of harm'...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

That was when we smelled the rain. It was so strong it seemed like more than just a smell. When we s...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Tortolita, let me tell you a story,” Estevan said. “This is a South American, wild Indian story ...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

It's terrible to lose somebody, but it's also true that some people never have anybody to lose, and ...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

I had decided early on that if I couldn’t dress elegant, I’d dress memorable.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Sadness is more or less like a head cold - with patience, it passes. Depression is like cancer.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

A human being can be good or bad or right or wrong, maybe. But how can you say a person is illegal? ...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

There were two things about Mama. One is she always expected the best out of me. And the other is th...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

The flowers were beaten down, their bent-over heads bejeweled with diamond droplets like earring on ...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Listen. Slide the weight from your shoulders and move forward. You are afraid you might forget, but ...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

The longer I think about a food industry organized around an animal that cannot reproduce itself wit...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

If it crosses your mind that water running through hundreds of miles of open ditch in a desert will ...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Most of us are creatures so comforted by habit, it can take something on the order of religion to in...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Every time I write a new novel about something sombre and sobering and terrible I think, 'oh Lor...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

I did it to win love, and to prove myself capable. Not to move mountains. In my opinions, mountains ...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Spring is made of solid, fourteen-karat gratitude, the reward for the long wait. Every religious tra...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Why is it that only girls stand on the sides of their feet? As if they're afraid to plant themselves...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

You think you're no good, so you can't do good things. Jesus, Codi, how long are you going to keep l...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Awareness is everything. Hallie once pointed out to me that people worry a lot more about the eterni...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Memory runs along deep, fixed channels in the brain, like electricity along its conduits; only a cat...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

What keeps you going isn't just some fine destination but the road you're on and the fact you know h...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Perhaps growing up meant we put our knives away and feigned ignorance of the damage.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

There was a roaring in my ears and I lost track of what they were saying. I believe it was the physi...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

You can’t replace people you love with other people…But you can trust that you’re not going to...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

It's one thing to carry your life wherever you go. Another thing to always go looking for it somewhe...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Insomnia’s different,” I said. It was hard to explain this to people. “You know the light that...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Sometimes I still have American dreams. I mean literally. I see microwave ovens and exercise machine...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

To people who think of themselves as God's houseguests, American enterprise must seem arrogant beyon...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

I don't expect to see perfection before I die. Lord, if I did I would have stuck my head in the oven...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

But children robbed of love will dwell on magic.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

You're thinking of revolution as a great all-or-nothing. I think of it as one more morning in a mugg...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

I thought: this is how life is, ridiculous beyond comprehension.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

I've about decided that's the main thing that separates happy people from the other people: the feel...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do i...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

At some point in my life I'd honestly hoped love would rescue me from the cold, drafty castle I live...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Your dreams, what you hope for and all that, it's not separate from your life. It grows right up out...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Emelina and I took each other in. All morning I'd felt the strange disjuncture that comes from recon...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

A miscarriage is a natural and common event. All told, probably more women have lost a child from th...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

What keeps you going isn't some fine destination but just the road you're on, and the fact that you ...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

What I want is so simple I almost can't say it: elementary kindness.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

She kept swimming out into life because she hadn't yet found a rock to stand on.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

He warned Mother not to flout God's Will by expecting too much of us. "Sending a girl to college is ...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

....mountains. They stand at every view, like a mother offering a blanket in which to wrap everyday ...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

But I'll tell you a secret. When I want to take God at his word exactly I take a peep out the window...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Because I could not stop for death he kindly stopped for me, or paused at least to strike a glancing...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

When you're given a brilliant child you polish her and let her shine.
Pigs in Heaven
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

As long as I kept moving, my grief streamed out behind me like a swimmer's long hair in water. I kne...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

I don't bring expectations to any of my books. I don't tell people what to do. I want to inv...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Nonfiction requires enormous discipline. You construct the terms of your story, and then you stick t...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

When I sit down to write, I consider myself an artist.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

I know I'm a rare person, a trained scientist who writes fiction, because so few contemporary no...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Most every book I bring into the world is like birthing a baby; it's a lot of effort!
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

After 'The Poisonwood Bible' was published, several people believed that my parents were mis...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

It's a funny thing: people often ask how I discipline myself to write. I can't begin to unde...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

At home, growing up, we weren't really poor. We had everything we needed, we just didn't hav...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

I suppose that is my central obsession. What we owe to society, what we owe to ourselves.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Being a novelist and being a mother have exactly coincided in my life: the call from my agent saying...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

When you pick up a novel from the bed side table, you put down your own life at the same time and you become another person for the duration.

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Barbara Kingsolver

When you pick up a novel from the bed side table, you put down your own life at the same time and you become another person for the duration.

Barbara Kingsolver

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