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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

This is how moths speak to each other. They tell their love across the fields by scent. There is no mouth, the wrong words are impossible, either a mate is there or he is not, and if so the pair will find each other in the dark.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Dark Mouth Scent
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
This is what it means to be alone: everyone is connected to everyone else, their bodies are a bright liquid life flowing around you, sharing a single heart that drives them to move all together. If the shark comes they will all escape, and leave you to be eaten.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Heart Mean Moving
Even feigning surprise, pretending it was unexpected and saying a ritual thanks, is surely wiser than just expecting everything so carelessly.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Animal Miracle Vegetables
It’s one thing to carry your life wherever you go. Another thing to always go looking for it somewhere else.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Else One Thing Somewhere
As a biologist, I can’t think of myself as anything but an animal among animals and plant.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Animal Plant Thinking
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
A sound-bite culture can’t discuss science very well. Exactly what we’re losing when we reduce biodiversity, the causes and consequences of global warming-these traumas can’t be adequately summarized in an evening news wrap-up.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Causes Evening Sound
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
Vengeance does not subtract any numbers from the equation of murder; it only adds them.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Doe Numbers Revenge
Our childhood had passed over into history overnight. The transition was unnoticed by anyone but ourselves.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Childhood Transition Unnoticed
The average food item on a U.S. grocery shelf has traveled farther than most families go on their annual vacations.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Animal Average Vacation
The way I see it, a person isn’t nothing more than a scarecrow… The only difference between one that stands up good and one that blows over is what kind of a stick they’re stuck up there on.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Blow Differences Way
Sugar, it’s no parade but you’ll get down the street one way or another, so you’d just as well throw your shoulders back and pick up the pace.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Pace Sugar Way
As long as I kept moving, my grief streamed out behind me like a swimmer’s long hair in water. I knew the weight was there but it didn’t touch me. Only when I stopped did the slick, dark stuff of it come floating around my face, catching my arms and throat till I began to drown. So I just didn’t stop.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Dark Grief Moving
Few people know so clearly what they want. Most people can’t even think what to hope for when they throw a penny in a fountain.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Fountain People Thinking Want

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Barbara Kingsolver Quotes