Barbara Kingsolver Quotes
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Solitude is a human presumption. Every quiet step is thunder to beetle life underfoot, a tug of impalpable thread on the web pulling mate to mate and predator to prey, a beginning or an end. Every choice is a world made new for the chosen.
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Root out all the "to be" verbs in your prose and bludgeon them until dead. No "It was" or "they are" or "I am." Don't let it be, make it happen.
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There is no point treating a depressed person as though she were just feeling sad, saying, 'There now, hang on, you'll get over it.' Sadness is more or less like a head cold- with patience, it passes. Depression is like cancer.
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Our plans are small and somewhat absurd.
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In my own worst seasons I've come back from the colorless world of despair by forcing myself to look hard, for a long time, at a single glorious thing: a flame of red geranium outside my bedroom window. And then another: my daughter in a yellow dress. And another: the perfect outline of a full, dark sphere behind the crescent moon. Until I learned to be in love with my life again. Like a stroke victim retraining new parts of the brain to grasp lost skills, I have taught myself joy, over and over again(15).
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You see mother, you had no life of your own. They have no idea. One has only a life of one's own.
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a meaningless phrase repeated again and again begins to resemble truth.
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I don't understand how any good art could fail to be political.
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I don't bring expectations to any of my books. I don't tell people what to do. I want to invite them in.
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When the scope of the problem seems insuperable, isn't it time to call this one, give it up, and get on with life as we know it. I do know that answer to that one: that's called child abuse. When my teenager worries that her generation won't be able to fix this problem, I have to admit to her that it won't be up to her generation. It's up to mine. This is a now-or-never kind of project.
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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.
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Recall that whatever lofty things you might accomplish today, you will do them only because you first ate something that grew out of the dirt.
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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.
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There were two things about Mama. One is she always expected the best out of me. And the other is that then no matter what I did, whatever I came home with, she acted like it was the moon I had just hung up in the sky and plugged in all the stars. Like I was that good.
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God, why does a mortal man have children? It is senseless to love anything this much.
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Let me claim that Africa and I kept company for a while and then parted ways as if we were both party to relations with a failed outcome. Or say I was afflicted with Africa like a bout of a rare disease from which I have not managed a full recovery.
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God doesn’t need to punish us. He just grants us a long enough life to punish ourselves.
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But Anatole said suddenly, 'Don't expect God's protection in places beyond God's dominion. It will only make you feel punished. I'm warning you. When things go bad, you will blame yourself.' 'What are you telling me?' 'I am telling you what I'm telling you. Don't try to make life a mathematics problem with yourself in the center and everything coming out equal. When you are good, bad things can still happen. And if you are bad, you can still be lucky.
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Quit smoking, and observe posted speed limits. This will improve your odds of getting old enough to be wise.
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you can't really know the person standing before you, because always there is some missing piece
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Finally, cooking is good citizenship. It's the only way to get serious about putting locally raised foods into your diet, which keeps farmlands healthy and grocery money in the neighborhood.
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Culture is a slingshot moved by the force of its past
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There's always a part of your nation's history that you haven't been told that... has a powerful impact on how you yourself may behave and may believe.
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If you can't dress expensive, dress memorable.
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Life proceeds, it enrages. The untouched ones spend their luck without a thought, believing they deserve it.
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The average food item on a U.S. grocery shelf has traveled farther than most families go on their annual vacations.
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Come to think of it, just about every tool was shaped like either a weenie or a pistol, depending on your point of view.
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This story about good food begins in a quick-stop convenience market.
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It's the one thing we never quite get over: that we contain our own future.
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Hope is a renewable option: If you run out of it at the end of the day, you get to start over in the morning.
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