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I had decided early on that if I couldn’t dress elegant, I’d dress memorable.

Barbara Kingsolver

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

Errors People Sin
If you’re standing in the manure pile, it’s somebody’s job to mention the stink.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Jobs Standing Stink
Parenting is something that happens mostly while you’re thinking of something else.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Else Happensm Something Thinking
As long as I kept moving, my grief streamed out behind me like a swimmer’s long hair in water. I knew the weight was there but it didn’t touch me. Only when I stopped did the slick, dark stuff of it come floating around my face, catching my arms and throat till I began to drown. So I just didn’t stop.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Dark Grief Moving
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
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
It’s surprising how much memory is built around things unnoticed at the time.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Homecoming Memories Mindfulness
There is no perfect time to write. There is only now.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Perfect Time Writing
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
The artist deals with what cannot be said in words. The novelist says in words what cannot be said in words.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Artist Novelist Writing
You could love your crazy people, even admire them, instead of resenting that they’re not self-sufficient.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Crazy People Self
Cooking is 80 percent confidence, a skill best acquired starting from when the apron strings wrap around you twice.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Animal Skills Vegetables
You think you’re the foreigner here, and I’m the American, and I just look the other way while the President or somebody sends down this and that . . . to torture people with. But nobody asked my permission, okay? Sometimes I feel like I’m a foreigner, too.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

People President Thinking
The truth needs so little rehearsal.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Honesty Needs Truth
I’m of a fearsome mind to throw my arms around every living librarian who crosses my path, on behalf of the souls they never knew they saved.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Library Mind Soul
I live in a rural part of Virginia surrounded by farms and farmers.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Farmers Farms Virginia

I had decided early on that if I couldn’t dress elegant, I’d dress memorable.

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I had decided early on that if I couldn’t dress elegant, I’d dress memorable.

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