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 KINGSOLVEREmpathy is really the opposite of spiritual meanness. It’s the capacity to understand that every war is both won and lost. And that someone else’s pain is as meaningful as your own.
More Barbara Kingsolver Quotes
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Some of us know how we came by our fortune and some of us don’t; but we wear it all the same
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You could love your crazy people, even admire them, instead of resenting that they’re not self-sufficient.
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You never knew which split second might be the zigzag bolt dividing all that went before from the everything that comes next.
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I considered her my ally, because, like me, she was imperfect.
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Back then I was still appalled that God would set down his barefoot boy and girl dollies into an Eden where, presumably, He had just turned loose elephantiasis and microes that eat the human cornea. Now I understand, God is not just rooting fo the dollies.
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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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Memory is a complicated thing, a relative to truth, but not its twin.
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Sometimes the strength of motherhood is greater than natural laws.
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There’s always more to a story than a body can see from the fenceline.
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I learned to write by reading the kind of books I wished I’d written.
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The first steps toward stewardship are awareness, appreciation, and the selfish desire to have the things around for our kids to see. Presumably the unselfish motives will follow as we wise up.
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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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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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It’s a funny thing: people often ask how I discipline myself to write. I can’t begin to understand the question. For me, the discipline is turning off the computer and leaving my desk to do something else.
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People ask without wanting to know.
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What you lose in blindness is the space around you, the place where you are, and without that you might not exist. You could be nowhere at all.
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I’m of a fearsome mind to throw my arms around every living librarian who crosses my path, on behalf of the souls they never knew they saved.
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…nothing momentous comes in this world unless it comes on the shoulders of kindness.
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Tall and straight I may appear, but I will always be Ada inside. A crooked little person trying to tell the truth. The power is in the balance: we are our injuries, as much as we are our successes
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If you’re standing in the manure pile, it’s somebody’s job to mention the stink.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER -
the conspicuous consumption of limited resources has yet to be accepted widely as a spiritual error, or even bad manners
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It is harrowing for me to try to teach 20-year-old students, who earnestly want to improve their writing. The best I can think to tell them is: Quit smoking, and observe posted speed limits. This will improve your odds of getting old enough to be wise.
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When moral superiority combines with billowing ignorance, they fill up a hot-air balloon that’s awfully hard not to poke.
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You can be as earnest and ridiculous as you need to be, if you don’t attempt it in isolation. The ridiculously earnest are known to travel in groups. And they are known to change the world.
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It seems very safe to me to be surrounded by green growing things and water.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER -
Oh, mercy. If it catches you in the wrong frame of mind, the King James Bible can make you want to drink poison in no uncertain terms.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER