The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof.
BARBARA KINGSOLVERThis is how moths speak to each other. They tell their love across the fields by scent. There is no mouth, the wrong words are impossible, either a mate is there or he is not, and if so the pair will find each other in the dark.
More Barbara Kingsolver Quotes
-
-
Everything you’re sure is right can be wrong in another place.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER -
A certain feeling comes from throwing your good life away, and it is one part rapture.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER -
Does a man become a revolutionary out of the belief he’s entitled to joy rather than submission?
BARBARA KINGSOLVER -
Of the two hundred bones in the human body, more than a quarter are in the foot. It is a more complicated instrument than an automobile transmission, and it is treated with far less consideration.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER -
Value is not made of money, but a tender balance of expectation and longing.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER -
The substance of grief is not imaginary. It’s as real as rope or the absence of air, and like both those things, it can kill.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER -
All of the promises of politicians, generals, madmen, and crusaders that war can create peace have yet to be borne out.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER -
I personally am inclined to approach [housework] the way governments treat dissent: ignore it until it revolts.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER -
Now, see, that’s why you want Internet friends. You can find people just exactly like you. Screw your neighbors and your family, too messy…the trouble is, once you filter out everybody that doesn’t agree with you, all that’s left is maybe this one retired surfer guy living in Idaho.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER -
Parenting is something that happens mostly while you’re thinking of something else.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER -
High fashion has the shelf life of potato salad. And when past its prime, it is similarly deadly.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER -
Honk if you love Jesus, text while driving if you want to meet up.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER -
There is no perfect time to write. There is only now.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER -
The power is in the balance: we are our injuries, as much as we are our successes.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER -
Even feigning surprise, pretending it was unexpected and saying a ritual thanks, is surely wiser than just expecting everything so carelessly.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER -
From the fallen tree everybody makes firewood.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER -
It’s surprising how much memory is built around things unnoticed at the time.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER -
We agreed with him in principal – we were little scientists, born and bred. But children robbed of love will dwell on magic.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER -
I concentrate on character, theme, language, structure, voice. It actually surprises me that no matter what I write, people declare it “intently political.” I’m just writing about the world I know, as it is. Wounds and griefs included.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER -
Sadness is more or less like a head cold – with patience, it passes. Depression is like cancer.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER -
Our house is like an empty cigarette packet, lying around reminding you what’s not in it.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER -
That was when we smelled the rain. It was so strong it seemed like more than just a smell. When we stretched out our hands we could practically feel it rising up from the ground. I don’t know how a person could ever describe that scent.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER -
Don’t wait for the muse. She has a lousy work ethic. Writers just write.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER -
The talkers are rising above the thinkers.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER -
Many of us who aren’t farmers or gardeners still have some element of farm nostalgia in our family past, real or imagined: a secret longing for some connection to a life where a rooster crows in the yard.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER -
It kills you to see them grow up. But I guess it would kill you quicker if they didn’t.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER