To people who think of themselves as God’s houseguests, American enterprise must seem arrogant beyond belief. Or stupid. A nation of amnesiacs, proceeding as if there were no other day but today. Assuming the land could also forget what had been done to it.
BARBARA KINGSOLVERThere’s always more to a story than a body can see from the fenceline.
More Barbara Kingsolver Quotes
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Height isn’t something you can have and just let be, like nice teeth or naturally curly hair. People have this idea you have to put it to use, playing basketball, for example, or observing the weather up there. If you are a girl, they feel a particular need to point your height out to you, as if you might not have noticed.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER -
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.
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It’s one thing to carry your life wherever you go. Another thing to always go looking for it somewhere else.
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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 -
Cooking is 80 percent confidence, a skill best acquired starting from when the apron strings wrap around you twice.
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Vengeance does not subtract any numbers from the equation of murder; it only adds them.
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The average food item on a U.S. grocery shelf has traveled farther than most families go on their annual vacations.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER -
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 -
In a world as wrong as this one, all we can do is make things as right as we can.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER -
the conspicuous consumption of limited resources has yet to be accepted widely as a spiritual error, or even bad manners
BARBARA KINGSOLVER -
He needs to go rub his soul against life.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER -
Tall 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
BARBARA KINGSOLVER -
There is no perfect time to write. There is only now.
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Even feigning surprise, pretending it was unexpected and saying a ritual thanks, is surely wiser than just expecting everything so carelessly.
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I grew up aware of all the people I depended on and who depended on me.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER