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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 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

Dream Hope Life Lesson
Many of us who aren’t farmers or gardeners still have some element of farm nostalgia in our family past, real or imagined: a secret longing for some connection to a life where a rooster crows in the yard.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Past Real Secret
Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don’t try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It’s the one and only thing you have to offer.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Alone Being Life Writing
I’ve seen how you can’t learn anything when you’re trying to look like the smartest person in the room.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Inspirational Learning Trying
The happiest people are the ones with the most community.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Community People
Because I could not stop for death he kindly stopped for me, or paused at least to strike a glancing blow with his sky-blue mouth as he passed.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Blow Blue Sky
Wherever I am, let me never forget to distinguish want from need
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Charity Needs Want
…our best task is to move forward without insisting others slide backward.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Moving Slides Tasks
The most important thing about a person is always the thing you don’t know.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Important Knows Persons
It kills you to see them grow up. But I guess it would kill you quicker if they didn’t.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Daughter Day Mom Mother
I learned to write by reading the kind of books I wished I’d written.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Book Reading Writing
I grew up aware of all the people I depended on and who depended on me.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Grew Grew Up People
Nothing to do with nature, unless you count human nature.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Day Diagonal Human Nature
Alice wonders if other women in the middle of the night have begun to resent their Formica.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Middle Night Wonder
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
Hope is a renewable option: If you run out of it at the end of the day, you get to start over in the morning.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Dream Inspiring Running
Write a nonfiction book, and be prepared for the legion of readers who are going to doubt your fact. But write a novel, and get ready for the world to assume every word is true.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Book Doubt Writing
There is no point treating a depressed person as though she were just feeling sad, saying, ‘There now, hang on, you’ll get over it.’ Sadness is more or less like a head cold- with patience, it passes. Depression is like cancer.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Cancer Depression Sadness
Every time I step onto an airplane, I turn to the right and take a good, hard stare into the maw of the engine. I don’t know what I’m looking for. I just do it.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Airplane Staring Steps
People read books to escape the uncertainties of life.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Book Life People Uncertainty
Thanks for this day, for all birds safe in their nests, for whatever this is, for life.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Bird Nests Safe
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
What you lose in blindness is the space around you, the place where you are, and without that you might not exist. You could be nowhere at all.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

might Reality Space
We agreed with him in principal – we were little scientists, born and bred. But children robbed of love will dwell on magic.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Children Littles Magic
All of the promises of politicians, generals, madmen, and crusaders that war can create peace have yet to be borne out.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Politician Promise War
She kept swimming out into life because she hadn’t yet found a rock to stand on.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Found Rocks Swimming
I don’t understand how any good art could fail to be political.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Art Failing Political

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Barbara Kingsolver Quotes