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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

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

Bird Book Want
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
It’s frightening when things you love appear suddenly changed from what you have always known.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Changed Frightening Love Things
Sometimes the strength of motherhood is greater than natural laws.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Family Inspiring Mothers Day
I personally am inclined to approach [housework] the way governments treat dissent: ignore it until it revolts.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Government Treats Way
Like kids who only ever get socks for Christmas, but still believe with all their hearts in Santa.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Believe Heart Kids
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.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Business Know Obsession Small Suppose Town
Some of us know how we came by our fortune and some of us don’t; but we wear it all the same
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Fortune How Know Same Wear
A person could spend most of a lifetime in retrospective terror, thinking of all the things one nearly didn’t do.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Lifetime Terror Thinking
Given my own circumstances, I find that anything can turn out to belong nearly anywhere.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Circumstances Given Turns
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

Careers Jobs Stress
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
I know I’m a rare person, a trained scientist who writes fiction, because so few contemporary novelists engage with science.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Novelist Rare Person Writing
I had decided early on that if I couldn’t dress elegant, I’d dress memorable.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Decided Dresses Memorable
Why is it that only girls stand on the sides of their feet? As if they’re afraid to plant themselves?
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Feet Feminist Girl
Insomnia’s different,” I said. It was hard to explain this to people. “You know the light that comes on when you open the refrigerator door? Just imagine it stays on all the time, even after you close the door. That’s what it’s like in my head. The light stays on.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Doors Insomnia Light

Good fiction creates empathy. A novel takes you somewhere and asks you to look through the eyes of another person, to live another life.

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Good fiction creates empathy. A novel takes you somewhere and asks you to look through the eyes of another person, to live another life.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Barbara Kingsolver Quotes