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Prayer had always struck me as more or less a glorified attempt at a business transaction.

Barbara Kingsolver

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 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 KINGSOLVER

Dream Hope Life Lesson
He was my father. I own half his genes, and all of his history. Believe this: the mistakes are part of the story. I am born of a man who believed he could tell nothing but the truth, while he set down for all time the Poisonwood Bible.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Believe Father Mistake
Given my own circumstances, I find that anything can turn out to belong nearly anywhere.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Circumstances Given Turns
Wars and elections are both too big and too small to matter in the long run. The daily work – that goes on, it adds up.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Funny Life Running
Our childhood had passed over into history overnight. The transition was unnoticed by anyone but ourselves.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Childhood Transition Unnoticed
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.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Life Lucky Trying
What I want is so simple I almost can’t say it: elementary kindness.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Kindness Simple 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.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Alone Being Life Writing
To think is not always to see.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Always Thinking Visible
The power is in the balance: we are our injuries, as much as we are our successes.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Balance Injury Success
You don’t think you’ll live past it and you don’t really. The person you were is gone. But the half of you that’s still alive wakes up one day and takes over again.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Grief Past Thinking
Will you explain to me why people encourage delusional behaviour in children, and medicate it in adults?
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Adults Children People
I’m not pretending to be ingenuous; I know what I’m doing.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Knows Pretending
There were two things about Mama. One is she always expected the best out of me. And the other is that then no matter what I did, whatever I came home with, she acted like it was the moon I had just hung up in the sky and plugged in all the stars. Like I was that good.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Home Moon Stars
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

Prayer had always struck me as more or less a glorified attempt at a business transaction.

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Prayer had always struck me as more or less a glorified attempt at a business transaction.

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