I rarely think of poetry as something I make happen; it is more accurate to say that it happens to me. Like a summer storm, a house afire, or the coincidence of both on the same day.
BARBARA KINGSOLVERTall and straight I may appear, but I will always be Ada inside. A crooked little person trying to tell the truth. The power is in the balance: we are our injuries, as much as we are our successes
More Barbara Kingsolver Quotes
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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.
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There are some who’d hardly lift a finger for kindness, but they would haul up a load of rock to dump on some soul they think’s been too lucky.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER -
What I want is so simple I almost can’t say it: elementary kindness.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER -
I made it to the childbearing phase without TV dependence, then looked around and thought, Well gee, why start now? Why get a pet python on the day you decide to raise fuzzy little gerbils?
BARBARA KINGSOLVER -
Pain reaches the heart with electrical speed, but truth moves to the heart as slowly as a glacier.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER -
The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER -
You could love your crazy people, even admire them, instead of resenting that they’re not self-sufficient.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER -
A sound-bite culture can’t discuss science very well. Exactly what we’re losing when we reduce biodiversity, the causes and consequences of global warming-these traumas can’t be adequately summarized in an evening news wrap-up.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER -
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 -
This is what it means to be alone: everyone is connected to everyone else, their bodies are a bright liquid life flowing around you, sharing a single heart that drives them to move all together. If the shark comes they will all escape, and leave you to be eaten.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER -
My worst nightmare is being stuck somewhere with nothing to read.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER -
Life proceeds, it enrages. The untouched ones spend their luck without a thought, believing they deserve it.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER -
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.
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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.
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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






