black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

Friends, there is nothing like your own family to make you appreciate strangers!

Barbara Kingsolver

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
I know I’m a rare person, a trained scientist who writes fiction, because so few contemporary novelists engage with science.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Novelist Rare Person Writing
I didn’t study writing in school, I studied biology as an undergraduate and graduate student. So I think that I write fiction in the scientific way. I love invention, obviously; I love creation of character. But I do feel very rooted in the real world, even in the way that I create characters.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Real School Writing
There was a roaring in my ears and I lost track of what they were saying. I believe it was the physical manifestation of unbearable grief.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Believe Grief Track
You can’t replace people you love with other people…But you can trust that you’re not going to run out of people to love.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Love People Running Trust
A person could spend most of a lifetime in retrospective terror, thinking of all the things one nearly didn’t do.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Lifetime Terror Thinking
Poetry feels like a country I visit without a passport, where I look around furtively, grab hold of something precious, and try to smuggle it back across the border. Any poem I get written down feels like contraband to me.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Borders Country Trying
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
This is how moths speak to each other. They tell their love across the fields by scent. There is no mouth, the wrong words are impossible, either a mate is there or he is not, and if so the pair will find each other in the dark.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Dark Mouth Scent
It’s a funny thing: people often ask how I discipline myself to write. I can’t begin to understand the question. For me, the discipline is turning off the computer and leaving my desk to do something else.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Discipline Funny Things Writing
It’s the one thing we never quite get over: that we contain our own future.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Get One Thing Over
One of the very first things I figured out about life…is that it’s better to be a hopeful person than a cynical, grumpy one, because you have to live in the same world either way, and if you’re hopeful, you have more fun.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Fun Hopeful Positive
Good fiction creates empathy. A novel takes you somewhere and asks you to look through the eyes of another person, to live another life.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Empathy Eye Looks
In the day-to-day, farm work is stress relief for me. At the end of the day, I love having this other career – my anti-job – that keeps me in shape and gives me control over a vegetal domain.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Careers Jobs Stress
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
Sugar, it’s no parade but you’ll get down the street one way or another, so you’d just as well throw your shoulders back and pick up the pace.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Pace Sugar Way
The most assiduous task of parenting is to divine the difference between boundaries and bondage.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Differences Father Tasks
Humans can be fairly ridiculous animals.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Animal Miracle Vegetables
Like kids who only ever get socks for Christmas, but still believe with all their hearts in Santa.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Believe Heart Kids
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
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
Stop a minute, right where you are. Relax your shoulders, shake your head and spine like a dog shaking off cold water. Tell that imperious voice in your head to be still.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Dog Voice Water
It’s frightening when things you love appear suddenly changed from what you have always known.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Changed Frightening Love Things
People love to read about sins and errors, but not their own.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Errors People Sin
Back then I was still appalled that God would set down his barefoot boy and girl dollies into an Eden where, presumably, He had just turned loose elephantiasis and microes that eat the human cornea. Now I understand, God is not just rooting fo the dollies.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Boys Eden Girl
Maybe life doesn’t get any better than this, or any worse, and what we get is just what we’re willing to find: small wonders, where they grow.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Grows Willing Wonder
There is no perfect time to write. There is only now.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Perfect Time Writing

Friends, there is nothing like your own family to make you appreciate strangers!

Related Topics

Popular Authors

Friends, there is nothing like your own family to make you appreciate strangers!

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Barbara Kingsolver Quotes