To think is not always to see.
BARBARA KINGSOLVERI’ve seen how you can’t learn anything when you’re trying to look like the smartest person in the room.
More Barbara Kingsolver Quotes
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School is about two parts ABCs to fifty parts Where Do I Stand in the Great Pecking Order of Humankind.
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Stop a minute, right where you are. Relax your shoulders, shake your head and spine like a dog shaking off cold water. Tell that imperious voice in your head to be still.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER -
Every betrayal contains a perfect moment, a coin stamped heads or tails with salvation on the other side.
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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 -
I concentrate on character, theme, language, structure, voice. It actually surprises me that no matter what I write, people declare it “intently political.” I’m just writing about the world I know, as it is. Wounds and griefs included.
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Memories do not always soften with time; some grow edges like knives.
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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.
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You never knew which split second might be the zigzag bolt dividing all that went before from the everything that comes next.
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Now I’m starting to think he wasn’t supposed to be my whole life, he was just this doorway to me.
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Last time I talked to her she didn’t sound like herself. She’s depressed. It’s awful what happens when people run out of money. They start thinking they’re no good.
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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.
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High fashion has the shelf life of potato salad. And when past its prime, it is similarly deadly.
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The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for!
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When moral superiority combines with billowing ignorance, they fill up a hot-air balloon that’s awfully hard not to poke.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER -
In a world as wrong as this one, all we can do is make things as right as we can.
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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 -
The power is in the balance: we are our injuries, as much as we are our successes.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER -
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.
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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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The most assiduous task of parenting is to divine the difference between boundaries and bondage.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER -
A flower is a plant’s way of making love.
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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 -
I don’t understand how any good art could fail to be political.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER -
People love to read about sins and errors, but not their own.
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 -
Value is not made of money, but a tender balance of expectation and longing.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER