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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

I made it to the childbearing phase without TV dependence, then looked around and thought, Well gee, why start now? Why get a pet python on the day you decide to raise fuzzy little gerbils?
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Pet Python Television
The artist deals with what cannot be said in words. The novelist says in words what cannot be said in words.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Artist Novelist Writing
It kills you to see them grow up. But I guess it would kill you quicker if they didn’t.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Daughter Day Mom Mother
Because I could not stop for death he kindly stopped for me, or paused at least to strike a glancing blow with his sky-blue mouth as he passed.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Blow Blue Sky
Forgive me, O Heavenly Father, according to the multitude of Thy mercies. I have lusted in my heart to break a man’s skull and scatter the stench of his brains across several people’s back yards.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Father Heart Men
I know I’m a rare person, a trained scientist who writes fiction, because so few contemporary novelists engage with science.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Novelist Rare Person Writing
It seems very safe to me to be surrounded by green growing things and water.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Growing Safe Water
Wherever I am, let me never forget to distinguish want from need
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Charity Needs Want
The moth settled onto the curtain and sat still. It was an astonishing creature, with black and white wings patterned in geometric shapes, scarlet underwings, and a fat white body with black spots running down it like a snowman’s coal buttons.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Black Eye Geometric Running Shape White
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
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Ada Balance Trying
A certain feeling comes from throwing your good life away, and it is one part rapture.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Feeling Good Life Throwing
In the day-to-day, farm work is stress relief for me. At the end of the day, I love having this other career – my anti-job – that keeps me in shape and gives me control over a vegetal domain.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Careers Jobs Stress
It’s one thing to carry your life wherever you go. Another thing to always go looking for it somewhere else.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Else One Thing Somewhere
Literature sucks you into another psyche. So the creation of empathy necessarily influences how you’ll behave to other people.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Empathy Literature People
What keeps me awake at the wheel is the thrill of trying something completely new with each book. I’m not a risk-taker in life, generally speaking, but as a writer I definitely choose the fast car, the impossible rock face, the free fall.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Book Fall Rocks
If you want sweet dreams, you’ve got to live a sweet life.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Dream Sweet Want

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Barbara Kingsolver Quotes