black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

Libraries are the one American institution you shouldn’t rip off.

Barbara Kingsolver

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

Balance Expectations Pajamas
Sleeping alone seemed unnatural to me, and pitiful, something done in hospitals or when you’re contagious.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Contagious Done Sleep
Fiction and essays can create empathy for the theoretical stranger.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Empathy Fiction Stranger
Our childhood had passed over into history overnight. The transition was unnoticed by anyone but ourselves.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Childhood Transition Unnoticed
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
To think is not always to see.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Always Thinking Visible
there are people who read my work and accuse me of being political! As far as I’m concerned that’s like accusing a dog of having a bark!
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Dog People Political
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
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
I have seen women looking at jewelry ads with a misty eye and one hand resting on the heart, and I only know what they’re feeling because that’s how I read the seed catalogs in January.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Eye Hands Heart
That was when we smelled the rain. It was so strong it seemed like more than just a smell. When we stretched out our hands we could practically feel it rising up from the ground. I don’t know how a person could ever describe that scent.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Hands Rain Strong
Why is it that only girls stand on the sides of their feet? As if they’re afraid to plant themselves?
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Feet Feminist Girl
Oh, mercy. If it catches you in the wrong frame of mind, the King James Bible can make you want to drink poison in no uncertain terms.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Kings Mind Poison
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
Once you start cooking, one thing leads to another. A new recipe is as exciting as a blind date. A new ingredient, heaven help me, is an intoxicating affair.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Animal Miracle Vegetables
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.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Bird Book Want
There were two things about Mama. One is she always expected the best out of me. And the other is that then no matter what I did, whatever I came home with, she acted like it was the moon I had just hung up in the sky and plugged in all the stars. Like I was that good.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Home Moon Stars
Listen. Slide the weight from your shoulders and move forward. You are afraid you might forget, but you never will. You will forgive and remember.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Change Forgiveness Moving
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.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Father Heart Men
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
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
If you never stepped on anybody’s toes, you never been for a walk.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Tact Toes Walks
In a world as wrong as this one, all we can do is make things as right as we can.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Life Thing World Wrong
How pointless life could be, what a foolish business of inventing things to love, just so you could dread losing them.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Foolish Losing Loss
We’re surrounded by mandates, and I believe that literature should be mandate-free. I feel very strongly about that.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Believe Literature Should
Anybody can get worked up, if they have the intention. It’s peacefulness that is hard to come by on purpose.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Intention Peacefulness Purpose
There are days when I am envious of my hens: when I hunger for a purpose as perfect and sure as a single daily egg.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Eggs Life Perfect

Libraries are the one American institution you shouldn’t rip off.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

Libraries are the one American institution you shouldn’t rip off.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Barbara Kingsolver Quotes