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Barbara Kingsolver Quotes

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Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say.

Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say.

Barbara Kingsolver
Writing, Creativity, People

But nothing on this earth is guaranteed, when you get right down to it, you know ? I've been thinking about that. About how your kids aren't really YOURS, they're just these people that you try to keep an eye on, and hope you'll all grow up someday to like each other and still be in one piece. What I mean is, everything you get is really just on loan. Does that make sense?" Sure,"I said. "Like library books. Sooner or later they've all got to go back into the nightdrop.

Barbara Kingsolver
Growing Up, Book, Mean

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
Inspiring, Running, Dream

Maybe life doesn't get any better than this, or any worse, and what we get is just what we're willing to find: small wonders, where they grow.

Barbara Kingsolver
Wonder, Grows, Willing
Barbara Kingsolver (2011). “Small Wonder”, p.319, Faber & Faber

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
"Animal Dreams". Book by Barbara Kingsolver, 1990.

In my own worst seasons I've come back from the colorless world of despair by forcing myself to look hard, for a long time, at a single glorious thing: a flame of red geranium outside my bedroom window. And then another: my daughter in a yellow dress. And another: the perfect outline of a full, dark sphere behind the crescent moon. Until I learned to be in love with my life again. Like a stroke victim retraining new parts of the brain to grasp lost skills, I have taught myself joy, over and over again(15).

Barbara Kingsolver
Life, Daughter, Dark

You never knew which split second might be the zigzag bolt dividing all that went before from the everything that comes next.

Barbara Kingsolver
Splits, Might, Next
Barbara Kingsolver (2012). “Flight Behaviour”, p.284, Faber & Faber

In a world as wrong as this one, all we can do is make things as right as we can.

Barbara Kingsolver
Life, World, Can Do
Barbara KingSolver (1988). “The Bean Trees: A Novel”, Harpercollins

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
Positive, Fun, Hopeful

Every one of us is called upon, perhaps many times, to start a new life. A frightening diagnosis, a marriage, a move, loss of a job...And onward full-tilt we go, pitched and wrecked and absurdly resolute, driven in spite of everything to make good on a new shore. To be hopeful, to embrace one possibility after another--that is surely the basic instinct...Crying out: High tide! Time to move out into the glorious debris. Time to take this life for what it is.

Barbara Kingsolver
Jobs, Moving, Loss

Thanks for this day, for all birds safe in their nests, for whatever this is, for life.

Barbara Kingsolver
Bird, Safe, Nests
Barbara Kingsolver (2008). “Prodigal Summer”, p.215, Faber & Faber

You can’t replace people you love with other people…But you can trust that you’re not going to run out of people to love.

Barbara Kingsolver
Running, People

The most important thing about a person is always the thing you don't know.

Barbara Kingsolver
Important, Persons, Knows
Barbara Kingsolver (2009). “The Lacuna”, p.286, Faber & Faber

What I want is so simple I almost can't say it: elementary kindness.

Barbara Kingsolver
Kindness, Simple, Want

Friends, there is nothing like your own family to make you appreciate strangers!

Barbara Kingsolver
Appreciate, Stranger
Barbara Kingsolver (2008). “The Poisonwood Bible”, p.399, Faber & Faber

Anybody can get worked up, if they have the intention. It's peacefulness that is hard to come by on purpose.

Barbara Kingsolver
Purpose, Intention, Peacefulness
Barbara Kingsolver (2011). “Pigs in Heaven”, p.200, Faber & Faber

The changes we dread most may contain our salvation.

Barbara Kingsolver
Change, May, Salvation
Barbara Kingsolver (2011). “Small Wonder”, p.13, Faber & Faber

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
Dog, Voice, Water
Barbara Kingsolver (2011). “High Tide in Tucson”, p.192, Faber & Faber

Recall that whatever lofty things you might accomplish today, you will do them only because you first ate something that grew out of the dirt.

Barbara Kingsolver
Might, Today, Dirt

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.

Barbara Kingsolver
Meaningful, Spiritual, Pain

What keeps you going isn't some fine destination but just the road you're on, and the fact that you know how to drive. You keep your eyes open, you see this damned-to-hell world you got born into, and you ask yourself, 'What life can I live that will let me breathe in & out and love somebody or something and not run off screaming into the woods?

Barbara Kingsolver
Running, Eye, World

If you can't dress expensive, dress memorable.

Barbara Kingsolver
Memorable, Dresses, Ifs

You don't think you'll live past it and you don't really. The person you were is gone. But the half of you that's still alive wakes up one day and takes over again.

Barbara Kingsolver
Grief, Past, Thinking

A miscarriage is a natural and common event. All told, probably more women have lost a child from this world than haven't. Most don't mention it, and they go on from day to day as if it hadn't happened, so people imagine a woman in this situation never really knew or loved what she had. But ask her sometime: how old would your child be now? And she'll know.

Barbara Kingsolver
Love, Children, Miscarriage
"Animal Dreams". Book by Barbara Kingsolver, September 1990.

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
Soul, Mind, Library
Barbara Kingsolver (2011). “High Tide in Tucson”, p.39, Faber & Faber

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