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 KINGSOLVERGood fiction creates empathy. A novel takes you somewhere and asks you to look through the eyes of another person, to live another life.
More Barbara Kingsolver Quotes
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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.
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It’s frightening when things you love appear suddenly changed from what you have always known.
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Sometimes the strength of motherhood is greater than natural laws.
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I personally am inclined to approach [housework] the way governments treat dissent: ignore it until it revolts.
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Like kids who only ever get socks for Christmas, but still believe with all their hearts in Santa.
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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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Some of us know how we came by our fortune and some of us don’t; but we wear it all the same
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A person could spend most of a lifetime in retrospective terror, thinking of all the things one nearly didn’t do.
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Given my own circumstances, I find that anything can turn out to belong nearly anywhere.
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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.
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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 -
I know I’m a rare person, a trained scientist who writes fiction, because so few contemporary novelists engage with science.
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I had decided early on that if I couldn’t dress elegant, I’d dress memorable.
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Why is it that only girls stand on the sides of their feet? As if they’re afraid to plant themselves?
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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