She kept swimming out into life because she hadn’t yet found a rock to stand on.
BARBARA KINGSOLVERI could never work out whether we were to view religion as a life-insurance policy or a life sentence.
More Barbara Kingsolver Quotes
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The loudest sound on earth, she thought, is a man with nothing to do.
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The moth settled onto the curtain and sat still. It was an astonishing creature, with black and white wings patterned in geometric shapes, scarlet underwings, and a fat white body with black spots running down it like a snowman’s coal buttons.
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I made it to the childbearing phase without TV dependence, then looked around and thought, Well gee, why start now? Why get a pet python on the day you decide to raise fuzzy little gerbils?
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I’m not pretending to be ingenuous; I know what I’m doing.
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Height isn’t something you can have and just let be, like nice teeth or naturally curly hair. People have this idea you have to put it to use, playing basketball, for example, or observing the weather up there. If you are a girl, they feel a particular need to point your height out to you, as if you might not have noticed.
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You can be as earnest and ridiculous as you need to be, if you don’t attempt it in isolation. The ridiculously earnest are known to travel in groups. And they are known to change the world.
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My worst nightmare is being stuck somewhere with nothing to read.
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Forgive me, O Heavenly Father, according to the multitude of Thy mercies. I have lusted in my heart to break a man’s skull and scatter the stench of his brains across several people’s back yards.
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I do my best work if I think about what it is I have to offer.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER -
It occurs to her that there is one thing about people you can never understand well enough: how entirely inside themselves they are.
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The talkers are rising above the thinkers.
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We agreed with him in principal – we were little scientists, born and bred. But children robbed of love will dwell on magic.
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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.
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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.
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The most assiduous task of parenting is to divine the difference between boundaries and bondage.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER