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There is no point treating a depressed person as though she were just feeling sad, saying, ‘There now, hang on, you’ll get over it.’ Sadness is more or less like a head cold- with patience, it passes. Depression is like cancer.

Barbara Kingsolver

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

Found Rocks Swimming
Hope is a renewable option: If you run out of it at the end of the day, you get to start over in the morning.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Dream Inspiring Running
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
What you lose in blindness is the space around you, the place where you are, and without that you might not exist. You could be nowhere at all.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

might Reality Space
Value is not made of money, but a tender balance of expectation and longing.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Balance Expectations Pajamas
There is no perfect time to write. There is only now.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Perfect Time Writing
From the fallen tree everybody makes firewood.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Fallen Tree Trouble
Every life is different because you passed this way and touched history… Listen being dead is not worse than being alive. It is different though. You could say the view is larger.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Alive Different Views
The happiest people are the ones with the most community.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Community People
He needs to go rub his soul against life.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Life Need Rub Soul
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

Meaningful Pain Spiritual
I’m of a fearsome mind to throw my arms around every living librarian who crosses my path, on behalf of the souls they never knew they saved.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Library Mind Soul
Given my own circumstances, I find that anything can turn out to belong nearly anywhere.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Circumstances Given Turns
Now, see, that’s why you want Internet friends. You can find people just exactly like you. Screw your neighbors and your family, too messy…the trouble is, once you filter out everybody that doesn’t agree with you, all that’s left is maybe this one retired surfer guy living in Idaho.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Guy Idaho Like Neighbor People
You think you’re the foreigner here, and I’m the American, and I just look the other way while the President or somebody sends down this and that . . . to torture people with. But nobody asked my permission, okay? Sometimes I feel like I’m a foreigner, too.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

People President Thinking

There is no point treating a depressed person as though she were just feeling sad, saying, ‘There now, hang on, you’ll get over it.’ Sadness is more or less like a head cold- with patience, it passes. Depression is like cancer.

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Popular Authors

There is no point treating a depressed person as though she were just feeling sad, saying, ‘There now, hang on, you’ll get over it.’ Sadness is more or less like a head cold- with patience, it passes. Depression is like cancer.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Barbara Kingsolver Quotes