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I don’t bring expectations to any of my books. I don’t tell people what to do. I want to invite them in.

Barbara Kingsolver

We agreed with him in principal – we were little scientists, born and bred. But children robbed of love will dwell on magic.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Children Littles Magic
I’m not pretending to be ingenuous; I know what I’m doing.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Knows Pretending
It’s what you do that makes your soul.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Dream Rabbits Soul
They all attended Hester’s church, which Dellarobia viewed as a complicated pyramid scheme of moral debt and credit resting ultimately on the shoulders of the Lord, but rife with middle managers.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Church Pyramid Scheme
It is harrowing for me to try to teach 20-year-old students, who earnestly want to improve their writing. The best I can think to tell them is: Quit smoking, and observe posted speed limits. This will improve your odds of getting old enough to be wise.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Thinking Wise Writing
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

Ideas Life Mother No Own
This is how Americans think. You believe that if something terrible happens to someone, they must have deserved it.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Believe Country States Thinking United
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
In the long run, most of us spend about fifteen minutes total in the entanglements of passion, and the rest of our days looking back on it, humming the tune.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Long Passion Running
…prodigal summer, the season of extravagant procreation. It could wear out everything in its path with its passionate excesses, but nothing alive with wings or a heart or a seed curled into itself in the ground could resist welcoming it back when it came.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Heart Summer Wings
School is about two parts ABCs to fifty parts Where Do I Stand in the Great Pecking Order of Humankind.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Education Order School
… Urban friends ask me how I can stand living here, ‘so far from everything?’ When I hear this question over the phone, I’m usually looking out the window at a forest, a running creek, and a vegetable garden, thinking: Define everything.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Garden Running Thinking
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
From the fallen tree everybody makes firewood.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Fallen Tree Trouble
Pain reaches the heart with electrical speed, but truth moves to the heart as slowly as a glacier.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Heart Moving Pain
If you can’t dress expensive, dress memorable.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Dresses Expensive Memorable

I don’t bring expectations to any of my books. I don’t tell people what to do. I want to invite them in.

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I don’t bring expectations to any of my books. I don’t tell people what to do. I want to invite them in.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Barbara Kingsolver Quotes