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Empathy 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.

Barbara Kingsolver

For Lou Ann, life itself was a life-threatening enterprise.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Enterprise Life Threatening
Honk if you love Jesus, text while driving if you want to meet up.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Driving Honk Jesus Love
Libraries are the one American institution you shouldn’t rip off.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Book Library Rip
Our house is like an empty cigarette packet, lying around reminding you what’s not in it.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Empty House Lying
Height isn’t something you can have and just let be, like nice teeth or naturally curly hair. People have this idea you have to put it to use, playing basketball, for example, or observing the weather up there. If you are a girl, they feel a particular need to point your height out to you, as if you might not have noticed.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Basketball Girl Nice
Codi: Gives you the willies, doesn’t it? The thought of raising kids in a place where the front yard ends in a two-hundred-foot drop? [referring to cliff dwellings] Loyd: No worse than raising up kids where the front yard ends in a freeway.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Civilization Kids Two
The truth needs so little rehearsal.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Honesty Needs Truth
Last time I talked to her she didn’t sound like herself. She’s depressed. It’s awful what happens when people run out of money. They start thinking they’re no good.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

People Running Thinking
If we can’t, as artists, improve on real life, we should put down our pencils and go bake bread.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Art Bread Real
Stop a minute, right where you are. Relax your shoulders, shake your head and spine like a dog shaking off cold water. Tell that imperious voice in your head to be still.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Dog Voice Water
I do my best work if I think about what it is I have to offer.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Best Work Offer Thinking
Plants do everything animals do, but slowly. They migrate, communicate, deceive, stalk their food and, with an ostentation of styles and perfumes to put the animal kingdom to shame, they make love. It’s just that catching them in flagrante delicto might require time-lapse photography.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Animal Love Making Photography
Prayer had always struck me as more or less a glorified attempt at a business transaction.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Prayer Transactions
Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don’t try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It’s the one and only thing you have to offer.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Alone Being Life Writing
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.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Pace Sugar Way
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.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Thinking Wise Writing

Empathy 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.

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Popular Authors

Empathy 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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Barbara Kingsolver Quotes