black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

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.

Barbara Kingsolver

I didn’t study writing in school, I studied biology as an undergraduate and graduate student. So I think that I write fiction in the scientific way. I love invention, obviously; I love creation of character. But I do feel very rooted in the real world, even in the way that I create characters.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Real School Writing
The truth needs so little rehearsal.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Honesty Needs Truth
…our best task is to move forward without insisting others slide backward.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Moving Slides Tasks
To think is not always to see.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Always Thinking Visible
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.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Dirt might Today
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

Meaningful Pain Spiritual
Everything truly important is washable.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Housework Important
Mr. Shepherd, ye cannot stop a bad thought from coming into your head. But ye need not pull up a chair and bide it sit down.” – Mrs. Brown
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Needs Pull Shepherds Ups
Pain reaches the heart with electrical speed, but truth moves to the heart as slowly as a glacier.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Heart Moving Pain
Sleeping alone seemed unnatural to me, and pitiful, something done in hospitals or when you’re contagious.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Contagious Done Sleep
Few people know so clearly what they want. Most people can’t even think what to hope for when they throw a penny in a fountain.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Fountain People Thinking Want
Humans can be fairly ridiculous animals.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Animal Miracle Vegetables
Memories do not always soften with time; some grow edges like knives.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Knives Memories Novelist
The loudest sound on earth, she thought, is a man with nothing to do.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Earth Men Sound
Why is it that only girls stand on the sides of their feet? As if they’re afraid to plant themselves?
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Feet Feminist Girl
Maybe life doesn’t get any better than this, or any worse, and what we get is just what we’re willing to find: small wonders, where they grow.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Grows Willing Wonder

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Barbara Kingsolver Quotes