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Barbara Kingsolver Quotes - Page 3

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It's frightening when things you love appear suddenly changed from what you have always known.

It's frightening when things you love appear suddenly changed from what you have always known.

Barbara Kingsolver
Changed, Things You Love, Frightening
Barbara Kingsolver (2008). “The Poisonwood Bible”, p.197, Faber & Faber

To think is not always to see.

Barbara Kingsolver
Thinking
Barbara Kingsolver (2009). “The Lacuna”, p.332, Faber & Faber

You think you're the foreigner here, and I'm the American, and I just look the other way while the President or somebody sends down this and that . . . to torture people with. But nobody asked my permission, okay? Sometimes I feel like I'm a foreigner, too.

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

If you want sweet dreams, you've got to live a sweet life.

Barbara Kingsolver
Dream, Sweet, Want

My worst nightmare is being stuck somewhere with nothing to read.

Barbara Kingsolver
Worst Nightmares, Nightmare, Stuck

Literature is one of the few kinds of writing in the world that does not tell you what to buy, want, see, be, or believe. It's more like conversation, raising new questions and inspiring you to answer them for yourself.

Barbara Kingsolver
Moving, Believe, Writing
"About Writing". www.kingsolver.com.

When I look out the window, I exhale a prayer of thanks for the color green, for my children's safety, for the simple acts of faith like planting a garden that helped see us through another spring, another summer. And I inhale some kind of promise to protect my kids' hopes and good intentions we began with in this country. Freedom of speech, the protection of diversity - these are the most important ingredients of American civil life and my own survival. If I ever took them for granted, I don't know.

Barbara Kingsolver
Motivational, Summer, Country

Everything you're sure is right can be wrong in another place.

Barbara Kingsolver
Travel
Barbara Kingsolver (2008). “The Poisonwood Bible”, p.421, Faber & Faber

That was when we smelled the rain. It was so strong it seemed like more than just a smell. When we stretched out our hands we could practically feel it rising up from the ground. I don’t know how a person could ever describe that scent.

Barbara Kingsolver
Strong, Rain, Hands
Barbara KingSolver (1988). “The Bean Trees: A Novel”, Harpercollins

This is how Americans think. You believe that if something terrible happens to someone, they must have deserved it.

Barbara Kingsolver
Believe, Thinking, United States
Barbara KingSolver (1988). “The Bean Trees: A Novel”, Harpercollins

Don’t try to make life a mathematics problem with yourself in the center and everything coming out equal. When you’re good, bad things can still happen. And if you’re bad, you can still be lucky.

Barbara Kingsolver
Life, Trying, Lucky
Barbara Kingsolver (2008). “The Poisonwood Bible”, p.264, Faber & Faber

Most people no longer believe that buying sneakers made in Asian sweatshops is a kindness to those child laborers. Farming is similar. In every country on earth, the most human scenario for farmers is likely to be feeding those who live nearby-if international markets would allow them to do it. Food transport has become a bizarre and profitable economic equation that's no longer really about feeding anyone ... If you care about farmers, let the potatoes stay home.

Barbara Kingsolver
Country, Children, Kindness

With all due respect for the wondrous ways people have invented to amuse themselves and one another on paved surfaces, I find that this exodus from the land makes me unspeakably sad. I think of the children who will never know, intuitively, that a flower is a plant's way of making love, or what silence sounds like, or that trees breathe out what we breathe in.

Barbara Kingsolver
Nature, Children, Flower
Barbara Kingsolver (2011). “Small Wonder”, p.48, Faber & Faber

Sometimes the strength of motherhood is greater than natural laws.

Barbara Kingsolver
Family, Inspiring, Mothers Day
Barbara Kingsolver (2001). “Homeland and Other Stories”, Wheeler Pub Incorporated

Good fiction creates empathy. A novel takes you somewhere and asks you to look through the eyes of another person, to live another life.

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

Poetry feels like a country I visit without a passport, where I look around furtively, grab hold of something precious, and try to smuggle it back across the border. Any poem I get written down feels like contraband to me.

Barbara Kingsolver
Country, Trying, Borders
Interview with Crystal Wilkinson, appalachianheritage.net. November 20, 2014.

There is no point treating a depressed person as though she were just feeling sad, saying, 'There now, hang on, you'll get over it.' Sadness is more or less like a head cold- with patience, it passes. Depression is like cancer.

Barbara Kingsolver
Depression, Cancer, Sadness
Barbara KingSolver (1988). “The Bean Trees: A Novel”, Harpercollins

Mr. Shepherd, ye cannot stop a bad thought from coming into your head. But ye need not pull up a chair and bide it sit down." - Mrs. Brown

Barbara Kingsolver
Shepherds, Needs, Pull Ups

I'm never going to tell the reader what to believe; I'm going to examine these characters that believe different ways, and examine their motives.

Barbara Kingsolver
Believe, Character, Way

She kept swimming out into life because she hadn't yet found a rock to stand on.

Barbara Kingsolver
Swimming, Rocks, Found

Memories do not always soften with time; some grow edges like knives.

Barbara Kingsolver
Memories, Knives, Novelists

... Urban friends ask me how I can stand living here, 'so far from everything?' When I hear this question over the phone, I'm usually looking out the window at a forest, a running creek, and a vegetable garden, thinking: Define everything.

Barbara Kingsolver
Running, Garden, Thinking
Barbara Kingsolver (2010). “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: Our Year of Seasonal Eating”, p.208, Faber & Faber

Sugar, it's no parade but you'll get down the street one way or another, so you'd just as well throw your shoulders back and pick up the pace.

Barbara Kingsolver
Pace, Sugar, Way
Barbara Kingsolver (2008). “The Poisonwood Bible”, p.146, Faber & Faber

Now I'm starting to think he wasn't supposed to be my whole life, he was just this doorway to me.

Barbara Kingsolver
Thinking, Doorways, Starting
Barbara Kingsolver (2008). “Prodigal Summer”, p.329, Faber & Faber

I've about decided that's the main thing that separates happy people from the other people: the feeling that you're a practical item, with a use, like a sweater or a socket wrench.

Barbara Kingsolver
Sweaters, People, Feelings

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