Does a man become a revolutionary out of the belief he’s entitled to joy rather than submission?
BARBARA KINGSOLVERWhat you lose in blindness is the space around you, the place where you are, and without that you might not exist. You could be nowhere at all.
More Barbara Kingsolver Quotes
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Anybody can get worked up, if they have the intention. It’s peacefulness that is hard to come by on purpose.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER -
The average food item on a U.S. grocery shelf has traveled farther than most families go on their annual vacations.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER -
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 -
A good title holds magic, some cognitive dissonance, a little grit between the teeth, but above all it is the jumping-off place into wonder.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER -
You know things are bad when a woman without any legs and who recently lost two of her own kids feels sorry for you.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER -
If you never stepped on anybody’s toes, you never been for a walk.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER -
People love to read about sins and errors, but not their own.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER -
Good fiction creates empathy. A novel takes you somewhere and asks you to look through the eyes of another person, to live another life.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER -
I grew up aware of all the people I depended on and who depended on me.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER -
Fiction and essays can create empathy for the theoretical stranger.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER -
It’s terrible to lose somebody, but it’s also true that some people never have anybody to lose, and I think that’s got to be so much worse.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER -
Back then I was still appalled that God would set down his barefoot boy and girl dollies into an Eden where, presumably, He had just turned loose elephantiasis and microes that eat the human cornea. Now I understand, God is not just rooting fo the dollies.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER -
This is what it means to be alone: everyone is connected to everyone else, their bodies are a bright liquid life flowing around you, sharing a single heart that drives them to move all together. If the shark comes they will all escape, and leave you to be eaten.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER -
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 -
I had decided early on that if I couldn’t dress elegant, I’d dress memorable.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER -
She is inhumanly alone. And then, all at once, she isn’t.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER -
Memories do not always soften with time; some grow edges like knives.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER -
You never knew which split second might be the zigzag bolt dividing all that went before from the everything that comes next.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER -
Growing food was the first activity that gave us enough prosperity to stay in one place, form complex social groups, tell our stories, and build our cities.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER -
From the fallen tree everybody makes firewood.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER -
Silence has many advantages…I write and draw in my notebook and I read anything I please.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER -
Eaters must understand, how we eat determines how the world is used.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER -
In a world as wrong as this one, all we can do is make things as right as we can.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER -
A certain feeling comes from throwing your good life away, and it is one part rapture.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER -
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 -
I’m not pretending to be ingenuous; I know what I’m doing.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER