Barbara Kingsolver quotes - page 5

In the day-to-day, farm work is stress relief for me. At the end of the day, I love having this other career - my anti-job - that keeps me in shape and gives me control over a vegetal domain. (Barbara Kingsolver)
I think the most interesting parts of human experience might be the sparks that come from that sort of chipping flint of cultures rubbing against each other. View quote
Barbara Kingsolver
I love developing children as characters. Children rarely have important roles in literary fiction - they are usually defined as cute or precious, or they create a plot by being kidnapped or dying. View quote
Barbara Kingsolver
I live in southern Appalachia, so I'm surrounded by people who work very hard for barely a living wage. It's particularly painful that people are working the farms their parents and grandparents worked but aren't living nearly as well. View quote
Barbara Kingsolver
Being a novelist and being a mother have exactly coincided in my life: the call from my agent saying that I had a contract for my first novel - that was on my answering phone message when I got back from the hospital with my first child. View quote
Barbara Kingsolver
I used to think religion was just more of the same thing. Dump responsibility on the big guy. Now I see an importance in that. It's a relief to accept that not everything is under your control. View quote
Barbara Kingsolver
To be hopeful, to embrace one possibility after another that is surely the basic instinct - crying out: High tide! Time to move out into the glorious debris. Time to take this life for what it is! View quote
Barbara Kingsolver
you can't really know the person standing before you, because always there is some missing piece. View quote
Barbara Kingsolver
Silence has many advantages. When you do not speak, other people presume you to be deaf or feeble-minded and promptly make a show of their own limitations. View quote
Barbara Kingsolver
Every life is different because you passed this way and touched history. View quote
Barbara Kingsolver
I lost a child," she said, meeting Lusa's eyes directly. "I thought I wouldn't live through it. But you do. You learn to love the place somebody leaves behind for you. (Barbara Kingsolver)
Be careful what you give children, for sooner or later you are sure to get it back. View quote
Barbara Kingsolver
Hunger of the body is altogether different from the shallow, daily hunger of the belly. Those who have known this kind of hunger cannot entirely love, ever again, those who have not. View quote
Barbara Kingsolver
Listen. To live is to be marked. To live is to change, to acquire the words of a story, and that is the only celebration we mortals really know. In perfect stillness, frankly, I've only found sorrow. View quote
Barbara Kingsolver
When people are frightened about going hungry and paying their mortgages, a scarcity model begins to prevail; they fear someone else will get their piece of the pie. View quote
Barbara Kingsolver
The arrogance of the able-bodied is staggering. Yes, maybe we'd like to be able to get places quickly, and carry things in both hands but only because we have to keep up with the rest of you ... We would rather be just like us, and have that be all right. View quote
Barbara Kingsolver
I wonder that religion can live or die on the strength of a faint, stirring breeze. The scent trail shifts, causing the predator to miss the pounce. One god draws in the breath of life and rises; another god expires. View quote
Barbara Kingsolver
Morning always comes. View quote
Barbara Kingsolver
But children robbed of love will dwell on magic. View quote
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. View quote
Barbara Kingsolver
Her body moved with the frankness that comes from solitary habits. But solitude is only a human presumption. Every quiet step is thunder to beetle life underfoot; every choice is a world made new for the chosen. All secrets are witnessed. (Barbara Kingsolver)
Sugar, it's no parade but you'll get down the street one way or another, so you'd just as well throw your shoulders back and pick up the pace. View quote
Barbara Kingsolver
It's frightening when things you love appear suddenly changed from what you have always known. View quote
Barbara Kingsolver
Your dreams, what you hope for and all that, it's not separate from your life. It grows right up out of it. View quote
Barbara Kingsolver
If you never stepped on anybody's toes, you never been for a walk. View quote
Barbara Kingsolver