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Empathy is really the opposite of spiritual meanness. It’s the capacity to understand that every war is both won and lost. And that someone else’s pain is as meaningful as your own.

Barbara Kingsolver

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
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.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Animal Miracle Vegetables
You know things are bad when a woman without any legs and who recently lost two of her own kids feels sorry for you.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Kids Sorry Two
Of the two hundred bones in the human body, more than a quarter are in the foot. It is a more complicated instrument than an automobile transmission, and it is treated with far less consideration.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Automobile Body Feet Human Two
Cooking is 80 percent confidence, a skill best acquired starting from when the apron strings wrap around you twice.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Animal Skills Vegetables
What keeps me awake at the wheel is the thrill of trying something completely new with each book. I’m not a risk-taker in life, generally speaking, but as a writer I definitely choose the fast car, the impossible rock face, the free fall.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Book Fall Rocks
It’s a funny thing: people often ask how I discipline myself to write. I can’t begin to understand the question. For me, the discipline is turning off the computer and leaving my desk to do something else.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Discipline Funny Things Writing
Tall and straight I may appear, but I will always be Ada inside. A crooked little person trying to tell the truth. The power is in the balance: we are our injuries, as much as we are our successes
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Ada Balance Trying
It’s surprising how much memory is built around things unnoticed at the time.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Homecoming Memories Mindfulness
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

Animal Miracle Vegetables
I’ve about decided that’s the main thing that separates happy people from the other people: the feeling that you’re a practical item, with a use, like a sweater or a socket wrench.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Feelings People Sweaters
I concentrate on character, theme, language, structure, voice. It actually surprises me that no matter what I write, people declare it “intently political.” I’m just writing about the world I know, as it is. Wounds and griefs included.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Character Grief Writing
The most important thing about a person is always the thing you don’t know.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Important Knows Persons
the conspicuous consumption of limited resources has yet to be accepted widely as a spiritual error, or even bad manners
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Errors Limited Resources Spiritual
Don’t wait for the muse. She has a lousy work ethic. Writers just write.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Ethics Waiting Work Writing
I never think that anything I’m writing is bluntly political in any way. I’m not going for commentary.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Political Thinking Writing

Empathy is really the opposite of spiritual meanness. It’s the capacity to understand that every war is both won and lost. And that someone else’s pain is as meaningful as your own.

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Popular Authors

Empathy is really the opposite of spiritual meanness. It’s the capacity to understand that every war is both won and lost. And that someone else’s pain is as meaningful as your own.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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