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Barbara Kingsolver Quotes - Page 8

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Forgive me, O Heavenly Father, according to the multitude of Thy mercies. I have lusted in my heart to break a man's skull and scatter the stench of his brains across several people's back yards.

Forgive me, O Heavenly Father, according to the multitude of Thy mercies. I have lusted in my heart to break a man's skull and scatter the stench of his brains across several people's back yards.

Barbara Kingsolver
Father, Heart, Men
Barbara Kingsolver (2008). “The Poisonwood Bible”, p.352, Faber & Faber

A novel can educate to some extent, but first a novel has to entertain. That's the contract with the reader: you give me ten hours and I'll give you a reason to turn every page. I have a commitment to accessibility. I believe in plot. I want an English professor to understand the symbolism while at the same time I want the people I grew up with - who may not often read anything but the Sears catalog - to read my books.

Barbara Kingsolver
Believe, Book, Commitment

The most important part of a story is the piece of it you don't know.

Barbara Kingsolver
Important, Pieces, Stories

If my setting is new to a reader, or the concerns of the novel are new, I hope they will learn something about the world. I would like to say that they can trust that what they do learn in the novel will be accurate, because I pay a lot of attention to facts. I do a lot of research to make sure that I'm not giving them, you know, blue moons of Jupiter. It's not science fiction.

Barbara Kingsolver
Moon, Blue, Giving

Height isn't something you can have and just let be, like nice teeth or naturally curly hair. People have this idea you have to put it to use, playing basketball, for example, or observing the weather up there. If you are a girl, they feel a particular need to point your height out to you, as if you might not have noticed.

Barbara Kingsolver
Basketball, Girl, Nice

Mexico admits you through an arched stone orifice into the tree-filled courtyard of its heart, where a dog pisses against a wall and a waiter hustles through a curtain of jasmine to bring a bowl of tortilla soup, steaming with cilantro and lime. Cats stalk lizards among the clay pots around the fountain, doves settle into the flowering vines and coo their prayers, thankful for the existence of lizards. The potted plants silently exhale, outgrowing their clay pots. Like Mexico's children they stand pinched and patient in last year's too-small shoes.

Barbara Kingsolver
Dog, Prayer, Children

Our house is like an empty cigarette packet, lying around reminding you what's not in it.

Barbara Kingsolver
Lying, House, Empty
Barbara Kingsolver (2009). “The Lacuna”, p.74, Faber & Faber

Tall and straight I may appear, but I will always be Ada inside. A crooked little person trying to tell the truth. The power is in the balance: we are our injuries, as much as we are our successes

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

A person could spend most of a lifetime in retrospective terror, thinking of all the things one nearly didn't do.

Barbara Kingsolver
Thinking, Lifetime, Terror
Barbara Kingsolver (2001). “Homeland and Other Stories”, Wheeler Pub Incorporated

We're surrounded by mandates, and I believe that literature should be mandate-free. I feel very strongly about that.

Barbara Kingsolver
Believe, Literature, Should

It feels strange to me to be living in a box, hiding from the steadying influence of the moon; wearing the hide of a cow, which is supposed to be dyed to match God-knows-what, on my feet; making promises over the telephone about things I will do at a precise hour next year.

Barbara Kingsolver
Moon, Years, Feet
Barbara Kingsolver (2011). “High Tide in Tucson”, p.15, Faber & Faber

If someone does learn about the world from reading a novel of mine, that makes me very happy. It's probably not what brings me into the novel in the first place - I usually am pulled in by some big question about the world and human nature that I'm not going to resolve in the course of the novel. But I'm very devoted to getting my facts straight.

Barbara Kingsolver
Reading, Doe, World

Every time I step onto an airplane, I turn to the right and take a good, hard stare into the maw of the engine. I don't know what I'm looking for. I just do it.

Barbara Kingsolver
Airplane, Steps, Staring

Feeling that morality has nothing to do with the way you use the resources of the world is an idea that can't persist much longer. If it does, then we won't.

Barbara Kingsolver
Ideas, Feelings, Environmental

In the long run, most of us spend about fifteen minutes total in the entanglements of passion, and the rest of our days looking back on it, humming the tune.

Barbara Kingsolver
Running, Passion, Long
Barbara Kingsolver (2009). “The Lacuna”, p.556, Faber & Faber

The loudest sound on earth, she thought, is a man with nothing to do.

Barbara Kingsolver
Men, Sound, Earth
Barbara Kingsolver (2008). “Prodigal Summer”, p.162, Faber & Faber

It occurs to her that there is one thing about people you can never understand well enough: how entirely inside themselves they are.

Barbara Kingsolver
People, Enough, Wells
Barbara Kingsolver (2011). “Pigs in Heaven”, p.156, Faber & Faber

Silence has many advantages…I write and draw in my notebook and I read anything I please.

Barbara Kingsolver
Notebook, Writing, Silence
Barbara Kingsolver (2008). “The Poisonwood Bible”, p.31, Faber & Faber

There are days when I am envious of my hens: when I hunger for a purpose as perfect and sure as a single daily egg.

Barbara Kingsolver
Life, Eggs, Perfect
Barbara Kingsolver, “Apotheosis”

What you lose in blindness is the space around you, the place where you are, and without that you might not exist. You could be nowhere at all.

Barbara Kingsolver
Reality, Space, Might

Pain reaches the heart with electrical speed, but truth moves to the heart as slowly as a glacier.

Barbara Kingsolver
Pain, Moving, Heart

The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for!

Barbara Kingsolver
Hope, Anticipation, Life Is
"Animal Dreams". Book by Barbara Kingsolver, 1990.

Like Daniel she enteres the lions' den, but lacking Daniel's pure and unblemished soul, Ada is spiced with the flavors of vice that make for a tasty meal. Pure and unblemished souls must taste very bland, with an aftertaste of bitterness.

Barbara Kingsolver
Soul, Vices, Meals
Barbara Kingsolver (2008). “The Poisonwood Bible”, p.106, Faber & Faber

Quit smoking, and observe posted speed limits. This will improve your odds of getting old enough to be wise.

Barbara Kingsolver
Wise, Odds, Smoking

I can think of no honorable answer. Why must some of us deliberate between brands of toothpaste, while others deliberate between damp dirt and bone dust to quiet the fire of an empty stomach lining? There is nothing about the United States I can really explain to this child of another world.

Barbara Kingsolver
Children, Thinking, Dust
Barbara Kingsolver (2008). “The Poisonwood Bible”, p.367, Faber & Faber

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