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Barbara Kingsolver Quotes - Page 16

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Over the last decade our country has lost an average of 300 farms a week. Large or small, each of those was the lifes work of a real person or family, people who built their lives around a promise and watched it break.

Over the last decade our country has lost an average of 300 farms a week. Large or small, each of those was the lifes work of a real person or family, people who built their lives around a promise and watched it break.

Barbara Kingsolver
Country, Real, Animal
Barbara Kingsolver (2010). “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: Our Year of Seasonal Eating”, p.113, Faber & Faber

If you ask me, when something extraordinary shows up in your life in the middle of the night, you give it a name and make it the best home you can.

Barbara Kingsolver
Home, Night, Names
Barbara Kingsolver (2009). “High Tide in Tucson: Essays from Now or Never”, p.11, Harper Collins

You know what the issue is? Do you want to know? It's what these guys have decided to call America. They have the audacity to say, 'There, you sons of bitches, don't lay a finger on it. That is a finished product.'" "But any country is still in the making. Always. That's just history, people have to see that.

Barbara Kingsolver
Country, Son, America

Hunger of the body is altogether different from the shallow, daily hunger of the belly. Those who have known this kind of hunger cannot entirely love, ever again, those who have not.

Barbara Kingsolver
Different, Body, Kind
Barbara Kingsolver (2008). “The Poisonwood Bible”, p.291, Faber & Faber

she's never forgotten, either, how a mystery caught in the hand could lose its grace

Barbara Kingsolver
Hands, Grace, Mystery
Barbara Kingsolver (2008). “Prodigal Summer”, p.59, Faber & Faber

Loose lips sink ships.

Barbara Kingsolver
Ships, Lips
Barbara Kingsolver (2009). “The Lacuna”, p.446, Faber & Faber

It's a great freedom to give up on love, and get on with everything else.

Barbara Kingsolver
Giving Up, Giving, Giving Up On Love
Barbara Kingsolver (2009). “The Lacuna”, p.566, Faber & Faber

This manuscript of yours that has just come back from another editor is a precious package. Don't consider it rejected. Consider that you've addressed it 'to the editor who can appreciate my work' and it has simply come back stamped 'Not at this address'. Just keep looking for the right address.

Barbara Kingsolver
Writing, Editors, Appreciate

People ask without wanting to know.

Barbara Kingsolver
People, Knows, Asks
Barbara Kingsolver (2009). “The Lacuna”, p.115, Faber & Faber

You could love your crazy people, even admire them, instead of resenting that they're not self-sufficient.

Barbara Kingsolver
Crazy, Self, People

The thing is, it's my own fault. I just can't put up with a person that won't go out of his way for me. And that's what a man is. Somebody that won't go out of his way for you. I bet it says that in the dictionary.

Barbara Kingsolver
Men, Way, Faults
Barbara Kingsolver (2011). “Pigs in Heaven”, p.289, Faber & Faber

I did it to win love, and to prove myself capable. Not to move mountains. In my opinions, mountains don't move. They only look changed when you look down on them from great height.

Barbara Kingsolver
Moving, Winning, Mountain
Barbara Kingsolver (2009). “Animal Dreams: A Novel”, p.36, Harper Collins

It's one thing to carry your life wherever you go. Another thing to always go looking for it somewhere else.

Barbara Kingsolver
Somewhere Else, One Thing

War so conspicuously benefits rich men and kills the poor ones.

Barbara Kingsolver
War, Men, Benefits
Barbara Kingsolver (2009). “The Lacuna”, p.294, Faber & Faber

Some of us know how we came by our fortune and some of us don't; but we wear it all the same

Barbara Kingsolver
Fortune, Know How, Knows
Barbara Kingsolver (2008). “The Poisonwood Bible”, p.13, Faber & Faber

You force people to stop asking questions, and before you know it they have auctioned off the question mark, or sold it for scrap. No boldness. No good ideas for fixing what's broken in the land. Because if you happen to mention it's broken, you are automatically disqualified.

Barbara Kingsolver
Asking Questions, Land, Ideas

We aimed for no more than to have dominion over every creature that moved upon the earth. And so it came to pass that we stepped down there on a place we believed unformed, where only darkness moved on the face of the waters. Now you laugh, day and night, while you gnaw on my bones. But what else could we have thought? Only that it began and ended with us. What do we know, even now? Ask the children. Look at what they grew up to be. We can only speak of the things we carried with us, and the things we took away.

Barbara Kingsolver
Children, Night, Water
Barbara Kingsolver (2008). “The Poisonwood Bible”, p.14, Faber & Faber

Let me claim that Africa and I kept company for a while and then parted ways as if we were both party to relations with a failed outcome. Or say I was afflicted with Africa like a bout of a rare disease from which I have not managed a full recovery.

Barbara Kingsolver
Party, Recovery, Disease
Barbara Kingsolver (2008). “The Poisonwood Bible”, p.13, Faber & Faber

But children robbed of love will dwell on magic.

Barbara Kingsolver
Children, Magic

Bitter words normally evaporate with the moisture of breath, after a quarrel. In order to become permanent, they require transcribers, reporters, complicit black hearts.

Barbara Kingsolver
Heart, Order, Black
Barbara Kingsolver (2009). “The Lacuna”, p.271, Faber & Faber

(on asparagus) Europeans of the Renaissance swore by it as an aphrodisiac, and the church banned it from nunneries.

Barbara Kingsolver
Church, Asparagus, Aphrodisiac
Barbara Kingsolver (2010). “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: Our Year of Seasonal Eating”, p.27, Faber & Faber

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.

Barbara Kingsolver
Everyday, Want, Window
Barbara Kingsolver (2008). “The Poisonwood Bible”, p.207, Faber & Faber

Planning complex, beautiful meals and investing one's heart and time in their preparation is the opposite of self-indulgence. Kitchen-based family gatherings are process-oriented, cooperative, and in the best of worlds, nourishing and soulful. A lot of calories get used up before anyone sits down to consume. But more importantly, a lot of talk happens first, news exchanged, secrets revealed across generations, paths cleared with a touch on the arm. I have given and received some of my life's most important hugs with those big oven-mitt potholders on both hands.

Barbara Kingsolver
Beautiful, Heart, Self
Barbara Kingsolver (2010). “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: Our Year of Seasonal Eating”, p.288, Faber & Faber

For if there is any single thing that everyone hopes for most dearly, it must be this: that the youngest outlive the oldest.

Barbara Kingsolver
Ifs
Barbara Kingsolver (2008). “The Poisonwood Bible”, p.282, Faber & Faber

The arrogance of the able-bodied is staggering. Yes, maybe we'd like to be able to get places quickly, and carry things in both hands but only because we have to keep up with the rest of you ... We would rather be just like us, and have that be all right.

Barbara Kingsolver
Hands, Arrogance, Able
Barbara Kingsolver (2008). “The Poisonwood Bible”, p.411, Faber & Faber

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