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Stop a minute, right where you are. Relax your shoulders, shake your head and spine like a dog shaking off cold water. Tell that imperious voice in your head to be still.

Barbara Kingsolver

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

Knows Pretending
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
People ask without wanting to know.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Ask Knows People
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
Alice wonders if other women in the middle of the night have begun to resent their Formica.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Middle Night Wonder
That was when we smelled the rain. It was so strong it seemed like more than just a smell. When we stretched out our hands we could practically feel it rising up from the ground. I don’t know how a person could ever describe that scent.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Hands Rain Strong
Poetry feels like a country I visit without a passport, where I look around furtively, grab hold of something precious, and try to smuggle it back across the border. Any poem I get written down feels like contraband to me.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Borders Country Trying
If you’re standing in the manure pile, it’s somebody’s job to mention the stink.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Jobs Standing Stink
Wars and elections are both too big and too small to matter in the long run. The daily work – that goes on, it adds up.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Funny Life Running
There’s always more to a story than a body can see from the fenceline.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Always Body Fenceline Stories
Value is not made of money, but a tender balance of expectation and longing.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Balance Expectations Pajamas
…nothing momentous comes in this world unless it comes on the shoulders of kindness.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Kindness Momentous Shoulder World
I’m widest awake as a writer doing something new, engaged in a process I’m not sure I can finish, generating at the edge of my powers. Some people bungee jump; I write.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

New People Something Writing
Everything you’re sure is right can be wrong in another place.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Everything Right Sure Travel
Don’t try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Creativity People Writing
There are days when I am envious of my hens: when I hunger for a purpose as perfect and sure as a single daily egg.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Eggs Life Perfect

Stop a minute, right where you are. Relax your shoulders, shake your head and spine like a dog shaking off cold water. Tell that imperious voice in your head to be still.

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Stop a minute, right where you are. Relax your shoulders, shake your head and spine like a dog shaking off cold water. Tell that imperious voice in your head to be still.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Barbara Kingsolver Quotes