Sadness is more or less like a head cold – with patience, it passes. Depression is like cancer.
BARBARA KINGSOLVERThe bad thing about small-town life is that everybody knows your business…I suppose that is my central obsession. What we owe to society, what we owe to ourselves.
More Barbara Kingsolver Quotes
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In a world as wrong as this one, all we can do is make things as right as we can.
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The most assiduous task of parenting is to divine the difference between boundaries and bondage.
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Now I’m starting to think he wasn’t supposed to be my whole life, he was just this doorway to me.
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The loudest sound on earth, she thought, is a man with nothing to do.
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There are days when I am envious of my hens: when I hunger for a purpose as perfect and sure as a single daily egg.
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Value is not made of money, but a tender balance of expectation and longing.
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But kids don’t stay with you if you do it right. It’s the one job where, the better you are, the more surely you won’t be needed in the long run.
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There was a roaring in my ears and I lost track of what they were saying. I believe it was the physical manifestation of unbearable grief.
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It’s frightening when things you love appear suddenly changed from what you have always known.
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Don’t try to make life a mathematics problem with yourself in the center and everything coming out equal. When you’re good, bad things can still happen. And if you’re bad, you can still be lucky.
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The truth needs so little rehearsal.
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Sometimes the strength of motherhood is greater than natural laws.
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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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This is how Americans think. You believe that if something terrible happens to someone, they must have deserved it.
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A person could spend most of a lifetime in retrospective terror, thinking of all the things one nearly didn’t do.
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All of the promises of politicians, generals, madmen, and crusaders that war can create peace have yet to be borne out.
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If you want sweet dreams, you’ve got to live a sweet life.
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I grew up aware of all the people I depended on and who depended on me.
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Memories do not always soften with time; some grow edges like knives.
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A certain feeling comes from throwing your good life away, and it is one part rapture.
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If you’re standing in the manure pile, it’s somebody’s job to mention the stink.
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It’s what you do that makes your soul.
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Downstream is always someone else’s up.
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Households that have lost the soul of cooking from their routines may not know what they are missing: the song of a stir-fry sizzle, the small talk of clinking measuring spoons, the yeasty scent of rising dough, the painting of flavors onto a pizza before it slides into the oven.
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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.
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Insomnia’s different,” I said. It was hard to explain this to people. “You know the light that comes on when you open the refrigerator door? Just imagine it stays on all the time, even after you close the door. That’s what it’s like in my head. The light stays on.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER