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The substance of grief is not imaginary. It’s as real as rope or the absence of air, and like both those things, it can kill.

Barbara Kingsolver

There’s always more to a story than a body can see from the fenceline.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Always Body Fenceline Stories
Wherever I am, let me never forget to distinguish want from need
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Charity Needs Want
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
But kids don’t stay with you if you do it right. It’s the one job where, the better you are, the more surely you won’t be needed in the long run.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Job Mother Running
The substance of grief is not imaginary. It’s as real as rope or the absence of air, and like both those things, it can kill.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Air Both Grief Real Thing
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
… 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
If it’s important, your heart remembers.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Heart Important Remember
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
Don’t try to make life a mathematics problem with yourself in the center and everything coming out equal. When you’re good, bad things can still happen. And if you’re bad, you can still be lucky.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Life Lucky Trying
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
I grew up aware of all the people I depended on and who depended on me.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Grew Grew Up People
Sleeping alone seemed unnatural to me, and pitiful, something done in hospitals or when you’re contagious.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Contagious Done Sleep
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
I considered her my ally, because, like me, she was imperfect.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Allies Imperfect Like Me
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

The substance of grief is not imaginary. It’s as real as rope or the absence of air, and like both those things, it can kill.

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The substance of grief is not imaginary. It’s as real as rope or the absence of air, and like both those things, it can kill.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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