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From the fallen tree everybody makes firewood.

Barbara Kingsolver

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
…prodigal summer, the season of extravagant procreation. It could wear out everything in its path with its passionate excesses, but nothing alive with wings or a heart or a seed curled into itself in the ground could resist welcoming it back when it came.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Heart Summer Wings
You see mother, you had no life of your own. They have no idea. One has only a life of one’s own.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Ideas Life Mother No Own
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
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.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Black Eye Geometric Running Shape White
I learned to write by reading the kind of books I wished I’d written.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Book Reading Writing
I’m not pretending to be ingenuous; I know what I’m doing.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Knows Pretending
I considered her my ally, because, like me, she was imperfect.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Allies Imperfect Like Me
Every life is different because you passed this way and touched history.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Different Life Way
In the long run, most of us spend about fifteen minutes total in the entanglements of passion, and the rest of our days looking back on it, humming the tune.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Long Passion Running
Memory is a complicated thing, a relative to truth, but not its twin.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Criminal Inspirational Memories Mind
He needs to go rub his soul against life.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Life Need Rub Soul
I grew up aware of all the people I depended on and who depended on me.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Grew Grew Up People
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
Your dreams, what you hope for and all that, it’s not separate from your life. It grows right up out of it.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Dream Grows Out Right Separate
Because I write fiction that is based in the real world, it’s going to lead people into some of the modern dilemmas and concerns and even catastrophes that they will think about in a new way.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Real Thinking Writing

From the fallen tree everybody makes firewood.

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From the fallen tree everybody makes firewood.

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