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You see mother, you had no life of your own. They have no idea. One has only a life of one’s own.

Barbara Kingsolver

But kids don’t stay with you if you do it right. It’s the one job where, the better you are, the more surely you won’t be needed in the long run.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Job Mother Running
Parenting is something that happens mostly while you’re thinking of something else.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Else Happensm Something Thinking
I learned to write by reading the kind of books I wished I’d written.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Book Reading Writing
You can be as earnest and ridiculous as you need to be, if you don’t attempt it in isolation. The ridiculously earnest are known to travel in groups. And they are known to change the world.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Group Needs World
A writer’s occupational hazard: I think of eavesdropping as minding my business.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Busybodies Hazards Thinking
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
Pain reaches the heart with electrical speed, but truth moves to the heart as slowly as a glacier.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Heart Moving Pain
This is how moths speak to each other. They tell their love across the fields by scent. There is no mouth, the wrong words are impossible, either a mate is there or he is not, and if so the pair will find each other in the dark.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Dark Mouth Scent
I learned to produce whether I wanted to or not. It would be easy to say oh, I have writer’s block, oh, I have to wait for my muse. I don’t. Chain that muse to your desk and get the job done.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Block Jobs Waiting
Everything truly important is washable.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Housework Important
Every time I step onto an airplane, I turn to the right and take a good, hard stare into the maw of the engine. I don’t know what I’m looking for. I just do it.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Airplane Staring Steps
As long as I kept moving, my grief streamed out behind me like a swimmer’s long hair in water. I knew the weight was there but it didn’t touch me. Only when I stopped did the slick, dark stuff of it come floating around my face, catching my arms and throat till I began to drown. So I just didn’t stop.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Dark Grief Moving
…nothing momentous comes in this world unless it comes on the shoulders of kindness.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Kindness Momentous Shoulder World
Because I write fiction that is based in the real world, it’s going to lead people into some of the modern dilemmas and concerns and even catastrophes that they will think about in a new way.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Real Thinking Writing
Alice wonders if other women in the middle of the night have begun to resent their Formica.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Middle Night Wonder
I considered her my ally, because, like me, she was imperfect.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Allies Imperfect Like Me

You see mother, you had no life of your own. They have no idea. One has only a life of one’s own.

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You see mother, you had no life of your own. They have no idea. One has only a life of one’s own.

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Popular Authors

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