I have seen women looking at jewelry ads with a misty eye and one hand resting on the heart, and I only know what they’re feeling because that’s how I read the seed catalogs in January.
BARBARA KINGSOLVERA certain feeling comes from throwing your good life away, and it is one part rapture.
More Barbara Kingsolver Quotes
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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.
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The bad thing about small-town life is that everybody knows your business…I suppose that is my central obsession. What we owe to society, what we owe to ourselves.
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Libraries are the one American institution you shouldn’t rip off.
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To think is not always to see.
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I’ve seen how you can’t learn anything when you’re trying to look like the smartest person in the room.
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The way I see it, a person isn’t nothing more than a scarecrow… The only difference between one that stands up good and one that blows over is what kind of a stick they’re stuck up there on.
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There was a roaring in my ears and I lost track of what they were saying. I believe it was the physical manifestation of unbearable grief.
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A sound-bite culture can’t discuss science very well. Exactly what we’re losing when we reduce biodiversity, the causes and consequences of global warming-these traumas can’t be adequately summarized in an evening news wrap-up.
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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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We’re surrounded by mandates, and I believe that literature should be mandate-free. I feel very strongly about that.
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If you can’t dress expensive, dress memorable.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER -
It’s one thing to carry your life wherever you go. Another thing to always go looking for it somewhere else.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER -
Feeling that morality has nothing to do with the way you use the resources of the world is an idea that can’t persist much longer. If it does, then we won’t.
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Our house is like an empty cigarette packet, lying around reminding you what’s not in it.
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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.
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There is no perfect time to write. There is only now.
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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.
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Recall that whatever lofty things you might accomplish today, you will do them only because you first ate something that grew out of the dirt.
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Once you start cooking, one thing leads to another. A new recipe is as exciting as a blind date. A new ingredient, heaven help me, is an intoxicating affair.
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Memories do not always soften with time; some grow edges like knives.
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My worst nightmare is being stuck somewhere with nothing to read.
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Even feigning surprise, pretending it was unexpected and saying a ritual thanks, is surely wiser than just expecting everything so carelessly.
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No human eye had looked at this moth before; no one would see its friends. So much detail goes unnoticed in the world.
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Finally, cooking is good citizenship. It’s the only way to get serious about putting locally raised foods into your diet, which keeps farmlands healthy and grocery money in the neighborhood.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER -
How strange to read of a place in a book, and then stand on it, listen to the birds sing, and spit on the cobbles if you want.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER -
There are some who’d hardly lift a finger for kindness, but they would haul up a load of rock to dump on some soul they think’s been too lucky.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER