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Literature is one of the few kinds of writing in the world that does not tell you what to buy, want, see, be, or believe. It’s more like conversation, raising new questions and inspiring you to answer them for yourself.

Barbara Kingsolver

Some of us know how we came by our fortune and some of us don’t; but we wear it all the same
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Fortune How Know Same Wear
Pain reaches the heart with electrical speed, but truth moves to the heart as slowly as a glacier.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

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

Dresses Expensive Memorable
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
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
Nothing to do with nature, unless you count human nature.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Day Diagonal Human Nature
Memories do not always soften with time; some grow edges like knives.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Knives Memories Novelist
She kept swimming out into life because she hadn’t yet found a rock to stand on.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Found Rocks Swimming
Be still, and the world is bound to turn herself inside out to entertain you. Everywhere you look, joyful noise is clanging to drown out quiet desperation.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Looks Patience World
… 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
The first steps toward stewardship are awareness, appreciation, and the selfish desire to have the things around for our kids to see. Presumably the unselfish motives will follow as we wise up.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Appreciation Selfish Wise
Time cures you first, and then it kills you.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Cure First Kill
You never knew which split second might be the zigzag bolt dividing all that went before from the everything that comes next.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

might Next Splits
The loudest sound on earth, she thought, is a man with nothing to do.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Earth Men Sound
There is no perfect time to write. There is only now.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Perfect Time Writing
organization is the religion of the single parent.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Insuperable Organization Parent Single
…our best task is to move forward without insisting others slide backward.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Moving Slides Tasks
Every time I step onto an airplane, I turn to the right and take a good, hard stare into the maw of the engine. I don’t know what I’m looking for. I just do it.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Airplane Staring Steps
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
To people who think of themselves as God’s houseguests, American enterprise must seem arrogant beyond belief. Or stupid. A nation of amnesiacs, proceeding as if there were no other day but today. Assuming the land could also forget what had been done to it.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Land Stupid Thinking
Parenting is something that happens mostly while you’re thinking of something else.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Else Happensm Something Thinking
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

Book Expectations People
If you’re standing in the manure pile, it’s somebody’s job to mention the stink.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Jobs Standing Stink
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
My worst nightmare is being stuck somewhere with nothing to read.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Nightmares Nothing Stuck Worst
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

Literature is one of the few kinds of writing in the world that does not tell you what to buy, want, see, be, or believe. It’s more like conversation, raising new questions and inspiring you to answer them for yourself.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

Literature is one of the few kinds of writing in the world that does not tell you what to buy, want, see, be, or believe. It’s more like conversation, raising new questions and inspiring you to answer them for yourself.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Barbara Kingsolver Quotes