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 KINGSOLVERThe artist deals with what cannot be said in words. The novelist says in words what cannot be said in words.
More Barbara Kingsolver Quotes
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He was my father. I own half his genes, and all of his history. Believe this: the mistakes are part of the story. I am born of a man who believed he could tell nothing but the truth, while he set down for all time the Poisonwood Bible.
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Now, see, that’s why you want Internet friends. You can find people just exactly like you. Screw your neighbors and your family, too messy…the trouble is, once you filter out everybody that doesn’t agree with you, all that’s left is maybe this one retired surfer guy living in Idaho.
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The most important part of a story is the piece of it you don’t know.
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When I want to take God at his word exactly, I take a peep out the window at His creation. Because that, darling, He makes fresh for us everyday.
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The most assiduous task of parenting is to divine the difference between boundaries and bondage.
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The changes we dread most may contain our salvation.
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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.
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We agreed with him in principal – we were little scientists, born and bred. But children robbed of love will dwell on magic.
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Does a man become a revolutionary out of the belief he’s entitled to joy rather than submission?
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Of the two hundred bones in the human body, more than a quarter are in the foot. It is a more complicated instrument than an automobile transmission, and it is treated with far less consideration.
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It’s frightening when things you love appear suddenly changed from what you have always known.
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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.
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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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Every life is different because you passed this way and touched history.
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People read books to escape the uncertainties of life.
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There is no perfect time to write. There is only now.
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Given my own circumstances, I find that anything can turn out to belong nearly anywhere.
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People ask without wanting to know.
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Anybody can get worked up, if they have the intention. It’s peacefulness that is hard to come by on purpose.
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If you want sweet dreams, you’ve got to live a sweet life.
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The happiest people are the ones with the most community.
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Codi: Gives you the willies, doesn’t it? The thought of raising kids in a place where the front yard ends in a two-hundred-foot drop? [referring to cliff dwellings] Loyd: No worse than raising up kids where the front yard ends in a freeway.
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It’s terrible to lose somebody, but it’s also true that some people never have anybody to lose, and I think that’s got to be so much worse.
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Everything you’re sure is right can be wrong in another place.
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I do my best work if I think about what it is I have to offer.
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…our best task is to move forward without insisting others slide backward.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER