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Barbara Kingsolver Quotes - Page 2

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Patriotism threatens free speech with death. It is infuriated by thoughtful hesitation, constructive criticism of our leaders and pleas for peace. It despises people of foreign birth. It has specifically blamed

Patriotism threatens free speech with death. It is infuriated by thoughtful hesitation, constructive criticism of our leaders and pleas for peace. It despises people of foreign birth. It has specifically blamed homosexuals, feminists and the American Civil Liberties Union. In other words, the American flag stands for intimidation, censorship, violence, bigotry, sexism, homophobia and shoving the Constitution through a paper shredder. Whom are we calling terrorists here?

Barbara Kingsolver
Thoughtful, People, Feminist
"And our flag was still there" by Barbara Kingsolver, www.sfgate.com. September 25, 2001.

It's surprising how much memory is built around things unnoticed at the time.

Barbara Kingsolver
Memories, Mindfulness, Homecoming

Honk if you love Jesus, text while driving if you want to meet up.

Barbara Kingsolver
Jesus, Want, Driving
Barbara Kingsolver (2012). “Flight Behaviour”, p.234, Faber & Faber

I prefer to remain anomalous.

Barbara Kingsolver
Barbara Kingsolver (2008). “The Poisonwood Bible”, p.202, Faber & Faber

If you're standing in the manure pile, it's somebody's job to mention the stink.

Barbara Kingsolver
Jobs, Stink, Standing
Barbara Kingsolver (2009). “The Lacuna”, p.447, Faber & Faber

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.

Barbara Kingsolver
Grief, Character, Writing
Interview with Crystal Wilkinson, appalachianheritage.net. November 20, 2014.

It's what you do that makes your soul.

Barbara Kingsolver
Dream, Soul, Rabbits

A dog can't think that much about what he's doing, he just does what feels right.

Barbara Kingsolver
Dog, Thinking, Doe

It kills you to see them grow up. But I guess it would kill you quicker if they didn't.

Barbara Kingsolver
Mothers Day, Mom, Daughter
"Animal Dreams". Book by Barbara Kingsolver, September 1990.

Children model the behavior of adults, on whatever scale is available to them. Ours are growing up in a nation whose most important, influential men - from presidents to the coolest film characters - solve problems by killing people. ... We have taught our children in a thousand ways, sometimes with flag-waving and sometimes with a laugh track, that the bad guy deserves to die.

Barbara Kingsolver
Children, Growing Up, Character

Human manners are wildly inconsistent; plenty of people have said so. But this one takes the cake: the manner in which we're allowed to steal from future generations, while commanding them not to do that to us, and rolling our eyes at anyone who is tediously PC enough to point that out. The conspicious consumption of limited resources has yet to be accepted widely as a spirtual error, or even bad manners.

Barbara Kingsolver
Eye, Errors, Cake

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.

Barbara Kingsolver
Life, Being Alone, Writing

...nothing momentous comes in this world unless it comes on the shoulders of kindness.

Barbara Kingsolver
Kindness, World, This World

The arc of history is longer than human vision. It bends. We abolished slavery, we granted universal suffrage. We have done hard things before. And every time it took a terrible fight between people who could not imagine changing the rules, and those who said, 'We already did. We have made the world new.' The hardest part will be to convince yourself of the possibilities, and hang on.

Barbara Kingsolver
Fighting, People, Vision
"2008 Commencement Address by Barbara Kingsolver". today.duke.edu. May 11, 2008.

Your dreams, what you hope for and all that, it's not separate from your life. It grows right up out of it.

Barbara Kingsolver
Dream, Grows, Your Dreams

God is frightful, God is great--you pick. I choose this: God is in the details, the completely unnecessary miracles sometimes tossed up as stars to guide us. They are the promise of good fortune in a cloudless day, and the animals in the clouds; look hard enough, and you'll see them. Don't ask if they're real.

Barbara Kingsolver
Stars, Real, Animal
Barbara Kingsolver (2011). “Small Wonder”, p.9, Faber & Faber

April is the cruelest month, T.S. Eliot wrote, by which I think he meant (among other things) that springtime makes people crazy. We expect too much, the world burgeons with promises it can't keep, all passion is really a setup, and we're doomed to get our hearts broken yet again. I agree, and would further add: Who cares? Every spring I go out there anyway, around the bend, unconditionally. ... Come the end of the dark days, I am more than joyful. I'm nuts.

Barbara Kingsolver
Crazy, Spring, Passion
Barbara Kingsolver (2010). “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: Our Year of Seasonal Eating”, p.43, Faber & Faber

To be hopeful, to embrace one possibility after another--that is surely the basic instinct. Baser even than hate, the thing with teeth, which can be stilled with a tone of voice or stunned by beauty. If the whole world of the living has to turn on the single point of remaining alive, that pointed endurance is the poetry of hope. The thing with feathers.

Barbara Kingsolver
Hate, Voice, Hopeful
Barbara Kingsolver (2011). “High Tide in Tucson”, p.17, Faber & Faber

Will you explain to me why people encourage delusional behaviour in children, and medicate it in adults?

Barbara Kingsolver
Children, People, Adults

The truth needs so little rehearsal.

Barbara Kingsolver
Truth, Honesty, Needs

A flower is a plant's way of making love.

Barbara Kingsolver
Flower, Making Love, Way
Barbara Kingsolver (2011). “Small Wonder”, p.48, Faber & Faber

There is no perfect time to write. There is only now.

Barbara Kingsolver
Writing, Perfect

When moral superiority combines with billowing ignorance, they fill up a hot-air balloon that's awfully hard not to poke.

Barbara Kingsolver
Ignorance, Air, Hot
Barbara Kingsolver (2010). “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: Our Year of Seasonal Eating”, p.223, Faber & Faber

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.

Barbara Kingsolver
Thinking, People, Terrible
Barbara KingSolver (1988). “The Bean Trees: A Novel”, Harpercollins

Time cures you first, and then it kills you.

Barbara Kingsolver
Firsts, Cures
Barbara Kingsolver (2009). “The Lacuna”, p.34, Faber & Faber

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