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Barbara Kingsolver Quotes - Page 5

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A first child is your own best foot forward, and how you do cheer those little feet as they strike out. You examine every turn of flesh for precocity, and crow it to the world. But the last one: the baby who trails her

A first child is your own best foot forward, and how you do cheer those little feet as they strike out. You examine every turn of flesh for precocity, and crow it to the world. But the last one: the baby who trails her scent like a flag of surrender through your life when there will be no more coming after--oh, that' s love by a different name.

Barbara Kingsolver
Baby, Cheer, Children
Barbara Kingsolver (2008). “The Poisonwood Bible”, p.320, Faber & Faber

Literature duplicates the experience of living in a way that nothing else can, drawing you so fully into another life that you temporarily forget you have one of your own. That is why you read it, and might even sit up in bed till early dawn, throwing your whole tomorrow out of whack, simply to find out what happens to some people who, you know perfectly well, are made up.

Barbara Kingsolver
Writing, Drawing, People

But the last one: the baby who trails her scent like a flag of surrender through your life when there will be no more coming after - oh, that's love by a different name. She is the babe you hold in your arms for an hour after she's gone to sleep. If you put her down in the crib, she might wake up changed and fly away. So instead you rock my the window, drinking the light from her skin, breathing her exhaled dreams. Your heart bays to the double crescent moons of closed lashes on her cheeks. She's the one you can't put down.

Barbara Kingsolver
Dream, Baby, Drinking
Barbara Kingsolver (2008). “The Poisonwood Bible”, p.320, Faber & Faber

A writer's occupational hazard: I think of eavesdropping as minding my business.

Barbara Kingsolver
Thinking, Hazards, Busybodies

You can be as earnest and ridiculous as you need to be, if you don't attempt it in isolation. The ridiculously earnest are known to travel in groups. And they are known to change the world.

Barbara Kingsolver
Groups, Needs, World
"Some of the best commencement speeches ever". www.theglobeandmail.com. June 16, 2014.

Households that have lost the soul of cooking from their routines may not know what they are missing: the song of a stir-fry sizzle, the small talk of clinking measuring spoons, the yeasty scent of rising dough, the painting of flavors onto a pizza before it slides into the oven.

Barbara Kingsolver
Song, Animal, Vegetables
Barbara Kingsolver (2010). “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: Our Year of Seasonal Eating”, p.130, Faber & Faber

I have seen women looking at jewelry ads with a misty eye and one hand resting on the heart, and I only know what they're feeling because that's how I read the seed catalogs in January.

Barbara Kingsolver
Heart, Eye, Hands
Barbara Kingsolver (2010). “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: Our Year of Seasonal Eating”, p.46, Faber & Faber

The power is in the balance: we are our injuries, as much as we are our successes.

Barbara Kingsolver
Balance, Injury
Barbara Kingsolver (2008). “The Poisonwood Bible”, p.414, Faber & Faber

It is harrowing for me to try to teach 20-year-old students, who earnestly want to improve their writing. The best I can think to tell them is: Quit smoking, and observe posted speed limits. This will improve your odds of getting old enough to be wise.

Barbara Kingsolver
Wise, Writing, Thinking
"How to be Hopeful". Commencement Address by Barbara Kingsolver, today.duke.edu. 2008.

There were two things about Mama. One is she always expected the best out of me. And the other is that then no matter what I did, whatever I came home with, she acted like it was the moon I had just hung up in the sky and plugged in all the stars. Like I was that good.

Barbara Kingsolver
Stars, Home, Moon
Barbara KingSolver (1988). “The Bean Trees: A Novel”, Harpercollins

Listen. Slide the weight from your shoulders and move forward. You are afraid you might forget, but you never will. You will forgive and remember.

Barbara Kingsolver
Change, Forgiveness, Moving
Barbara Kingsolver (2008). “The Poisonwood Bible”, p.448, Faber & Faber

The average food item on a U.S. grocery shelf has traveled farther than most families go on their annual vacations.

Barbara Kingsolver
Animal, Vacation, Average
Barbara Kingsolver (2010). “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: Our Year of Seasonal Eating”, p.4, Faber & Faber

Sleeping alone seemed unnatural to me, and pitiful, something done in hospitals or when you're contagious.

Barbara Kingsolver
Sleep, Done, Contagious

Awareness is everything. Hallie once pointed out to me that people worry a lot more about the eternity *after* their deaths than the eternity that happened before they were born. But it's the same amount of infinity, rolling out in all directions from where we stand.

Barbara Kingsolver
People, Worry, Infinity

I lost a child," she said, meeting Lusa's eyes directly. "I thought I wouldn't live through it. But you do. You learn to love the place somebody leaves behind for you.

Barbara Kingsolver
Children, Eye, Bereavement
Barbara Kingsolver (2008). “Prodigal Summer”, p.63, Faber & Faber

I attempted briefly to consecrate myself in the public library, believing every crack in my soul could be chinked with a book.

Barbara Kingsolver
Believe, Book, Soul
Barbara Kingsolver (2008). “The Poisonwood Bible”, p.11, Faber & Faber

Nonfiction requires enormous discipline. You construct the terms of your story, and then you stick to them.

Barbara Kingsolver
Discipline, Stories, Nonfiction

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.

Barbara Kingsolver
Facts, Destination, Fine

The substance of grief is not imaginary. It's as real as rope or the absence of air, and like both those things, it can kill.

Barbara Kingsolver
Real, Grief, Air
Barbara Kingsolver (2008). “The Poisonwood Bible”, p.320, Faber & Faber

It's the one thing we never quite get over: that we contain our own future.

Barbara Kingsolver
Get Over, One Thing

I’ve seen how you can’t learn anything when you’re trying to look like the smartest person in the room.

Barbara Kingsolver
Inspirational, Learning, Trying
Barbara Kingsolver (2008). “The Poisonwood Bible”, p.192, Faber & Faber

Don't wait for the muse. She has a lousy work ethic. Writers just write.

Barbara Kingsolver
Writing, Work Ethic, Waiting

There's a graveyard in northern France where all the dead boys from D-Day are buried. The white crosses reach from one horizon to the other. I remember looking it over and thinking it was a forest of graves. But the rows were like this, dizzying, diagonal, perfectly straight, so after all it wasn't a forest but an orchard of graves. Nothing to do with nature, unless you count human nature.

Barbara Kingsolver
War, Sacrifice, Boys
Barbara Kingsolver (2009). “Animal Dreams: A Novel”, p.14, Harper Collins

the conspicuous consumption of limited resources has yet to be accepted widely as a spiritual error, or even bad manners

Barbara Kingsolver
Spiritual, Errors, Limited Resources
Barbara Kingsolver (2010). “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: Our Year of Seasonal Eating”, p.67, Faber & Faber

The daily work - that goes on, it adds up.

Barbara Kingsolver
Inspirational Life, Add, Goes On

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