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That was when we smelled the rain. It was so strong it seemed like more than just a smell. When we stretched out our hands we could practically feel it rising up from the ground. I don’t know how a person could ever describe that scent.

Barbara Kingsolver

It occurs to her that there is one thing about people you can never understand well enough: how entirely inside themselves they are.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Enough People Wells
If you’re standing in the manure pile, it’s somebody’s job to mention the stink.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Jobs Standing Stink
A certain feeling comes from throwing your good life away, and it is one part rapture.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Feeling Good Life Throwing
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

Kings Mind Poison
You think you’re the foreigner here, and I’m the American, and I just look the other way while the President or somebody sends down this and that . . . to torture people with. But nobody asked my permission, okay? Sometimes I feel like I’m a foreigner, too.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

People President Thinking
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
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 could never work out whether we were to view religion as a life-insurance policy or a life sentence.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Life Out Views Work
Global commerce is driven by a single conviction: the inalienable right to earn profit, regardless of any human cost.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Cost Greed Money
This is how Americans think. You believe that if something terrible happens to someone, they must have deserved it.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Believe Country States Thinking United
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
Fiction and essays can create empathy for the theoretical stranger.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Empathy Fiction Stranger
The average food item on a U.S. grocery shelf has traveled farther than most families go on their annual vacations.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Animal Average Vacation
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
The most important thing about a person is always the thing you don’t know.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Important Knows Persons
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

That was when we smelled the rain. It was so strong it seemed like more than just a smell. When we stretched out our hands we could practically feel it rising up from the ground. I don’t know how a person could ever describe that scent.

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That was when we smelled the rain. It was so strong it seemed like more than just a smell. When we stretched out our hands we could practically feel it rising up from the ground. I don’t know how a person could ever describe that scent.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Barbara Kingsolver Quotes