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Barbara Kingsolver Quotes - Page 12

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Wake up now, look alive, for here is a day off work just to praise Creation: the turkey, the squash, and the corn, these things that ate and drank sunshine, grass, mud, and rain, and then in the shortening days laid

Wake up now, look alive, for here is a day off work just to praise Creation: the turkey, the squash, and the corn, these things that ate and drank sunshine, grass, mud, and rain, and then in the shortening days laid down their lives for our welfare and onward resolve. There's the miracle for you, the absolute sacrifice that still holds back seed: a germ of promise to do the whole thing again, another time. . . Thanksgiving is Creation's birthday party. Praise harvest, a pause and sigh on the breath of immortality.

Barbara Kingsolver
Party, Rain, Sunshine
Barbara Kingsolver (2010). “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: Our Year of Seasonal Eating”, p.284, Faber & Faber

He lifts her breasts, which fit perfectly into his hands, though he knows this is no promise that he gets to keep them. A million things you can't have will fit in a human hand.

Barbara Kingsolver
Hands, Promise, Fit
Barbara Kingsolver (2011). “Pigs in Heaven”, p.41, Faber & Faber

I thought: this is how life is, ridiculous beyond comprehension.

Barbara Kingsolver
Ridiculous, Life Is, Comprehension
Barbara Kingsolver (2009). “Animal Dreams: A Novel”, p.33, Harper Collins

When you're given a brilliant child you polish her and let her shine. Pigs in Heaven

Barbara Kingsolver
Children, Pigs, Heaven
Barbara Kingsolver (2011). “Pigs in Heaven”, p.115, Faber & Faber

Children can be your heartache. But that doesn't matter, you have to go on and have them . . . it works out.

Barbara Kingsolver
Children, Heartache, Work Out

The bad thing about small-town life is that everybody knows your business...I suppose that is my central obsession. What we owe to society, what we owe to ourselves.

Barbara Kingsolver
Obsession
"Among the wild things" by Suzie Mackenzie, www.theguardian.com. November 17, 2000.

I never think that anything I'm writing is bluntly political in any way. I'm not going for commentary.

Barbara Kingsolver
Writing, Thinking, Political

When the scope of the problem seems insuperable, isn't it time to call this one, give it up, and get on with life as we know it. I do know that answer to that one: that's called child abuse. When my teenager worries that her generation won't be able to fix this problem, I have to admit to her that it won't be up to her generation. It's up to mine. This is a now-or-never kind of project.

Barbara Kingsolver
Children, Teenager, Giving

It takes some courage to write fiction about politically controversial topics. The dread is you'll be labeled a political writer.

Barbara Kingsolver
Writing, Controversial Topics, Political

Literature sucks you into another psyche. So the creation of empathy necessarily influences how you'll behave to other people.

Barbara Kingsolver
People, Empathy, Literature
"A life in writing" by Maya Jaggi, www.theguardian.com. June 11, 2010.

There's always a part of your nation's history that you haven't been told that... has a powerful impact on how you yourself may behave and may believe.

Barbara Kingsolver
Powerful, Believe, Impact

Fiction and essays can create empathy for the theoretical stranger.

Barbara Kingsolver
Empathy, Fiction, Stranger

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
Change, Uplifting, Hope

You know things are bad when a woman without any legs and who recently lost two of her own kids feels sorry for you.

Barbara Kingsolver
Sorry, Kids, Two
Barbara Kingsolver (2008). “The Poisonwood Bible”, p.173, Faber & Faber

This is what it means to be alone: everyone is connected to everyone else, their bodies are a bright liquid life flowing around you, sharing a single heart that drives them to move all together. If the shark comes they will all escape, and leave you to be eaten.

Barbara Kingsolver
Moving, Heart, Mean

Every life is different because you passed this way and touched history.

Barbara Kingsolver
Life, Different, Way
Barbara Kingsolver (2008). “The Poisonwood Bible”, p.444, Faber & Faber

Small change, small wonders - these are the currency of my endurance and ultimately of my life.

Barbara Kingsolver
Small Changes, Endurance, Wonder
Barbara Kingsolver (2011). “Small Wonder”, p.28, Faber & Faber

I do my best work if I think about what it is I have to offer.

Barbara Kingsolver
Thinking, Best Work, Offers

I know I'm a rare person, a trained scientist who writes fiction, because so few contemporary novelists engage with science.

Barbara Kingsolver
Writing, Rare Person, Novelists

As a biologist, I can't think of myself as anything but an animal among animals and plant.

Barbara Kingsolver
Animal, Thinking, Plant
"A life in writing" by Maya Jaggi, www.theguardian.com. June 11, 2010.

I don't bring expectations to any of my books. I don't tell people what to do. I want to invite them in.

Barbara Kingsolver
Book, People, Expectations

After 'The Poisonwood Bible' was published, several people believed that my parents were missionaries, which could not be further from the truth.

Barbara Kingsolver
People, Parent, Missionary
"Motherhood is so sentimentalised in our culture". Interview with Gemma Kappala-Ramsamy, www.theguardian.com. May 11, 2013.

People's dreams are made out of what they do all day. The same way a dog that runs after rabbits will dream of rabbits. It's what you do that makes your soul, not the other way around.

Barbara Kingsolver
Running, Dream, Dog

Sometimes I still have American dreams. I mean literally. I see microwave ovens and exercise machines and grocery store shelves with 30 brands of shampoo, and I look at these things oddly, in my dream. I stand and think, "What is all this for? What is the hunger that drives this need?" I think it's fear. Codi, I hope you won't be hurt by this, but I don't think I'll ever be going back. I don't think I can.

Barbara Kingsolver
Dream, Hurt, Mean

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
Summer, Thinking, Poetry

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