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Barbara Kingsolver Quotes - Page 9

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Mom is losing, no doubt, because our vegetables have come to lack two features of interest: nutrition and flavor. Storage and transport take predictable tolls on the volatile plant compounds that subtly add up to taste

Mom is losing, no doubt, because our vegetables have come to lack two features of interest: nutrition and flavor. Storage and transport take predictable tolls on the volatile plant compounds that subtly add up to taste and food value. Breeding to increase shelf life also has tended to decrease palatability. Bizarre as it seems, we've accepted a tradeoff that amounts to: "Give me every vegetable in every season, even if it tastes like a cardboard picture of its former self."

Barbara Kingsolver
Mom, Self, Vegetables
Barbara Kingsolver (2010). “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: Our Year of Seasonal Eating”, p.54, Faber & Faber

...whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. And peace will be with you.

Barbara Kingsolver
Thinking, Lovely, Praise
Barbara Kingsolver (2012). “Flight Behaviour”, p.58, Faber & Faber

Write a nonfiction book, and be prepared for the legion of readers who are going to doubt your fact. But write a novel, and get ready for the world to assume every word is true.

Barbara Kingsolver
Book, Writing, Doubt
Barbara Kingsolver (2011). “High Tide in Tucson”, p.160, Faber & Faber

The artist deals with what cannot be said in words. The novelist says in words what cannot be said in words.

Barbara Kingsolver
Writing, Artist, Novelists
Barbara Kingsolver (2011). “High Tide in Tucson”, p.172, Faber & Faber

We must surely appear to the world as exactly what we are: a nation that organizes its economy around consuming twice as much oil as it produces, and around the profligate wastefulness of the wars and campaigns required to defend such consumption. In recent years we have defined our national interest largely in terms of the oil fields and pipelines we need to procure fuel.

Barbara Kingsolver
War, Years, Oil
Barbara Kingsolver (2011). “Small Wonder”, p.33, Faber & Faber

The writing has been on the wall for some years now, but we are a nation illiterate in the language of the wall. The writing just gets bigger. Something will eventually bring down the charming, infuriating naïveté of Americans that allows us our blithe consumption and cheerful ignorance of the secret ugliness that bring us whatever we want.

Barbara Kingsolver
Wall, Ignorance, Writing
Barbara Kingsolver (2011). “Small Wonder”, p.317, Faber & Faber

I believe that the people who survive a cataclysm, rather than those who stand by and analyze it, are nearly always the more credible witnesses to their own history.

Barbara Kingsolver
Believe, People, Witness

No kind of bomb ever built will extinguish hatred.

Barbara Kingsolver
Hatred, Bombs, Kind
"A Pure, High Note of Anguish". articles.latimes.com. September 23, 2001.

In the places that call me out, I know I'll recover my wordless childhood trust in the largeness of life and its willingness to take me in.

Barbara Kingsolver
Childhood, Religion, Gardening
Barbara Kingsolver, Annie Griffiths Belt (2002). “Last stand: America's virgin lands”, National Geographic

From my earliest memory, times of crisis seemed to end up with women in the kitchen preparing food for men.

Barbara Kingsolver
Memories, Men, Kitchen
Barbara KingSolver (1988). “The Bean Trees: A Novel”, Harpercollins

Codi: Gives you the willies, doesn't it? The thought of raising kids in a place where the front yard ends in a two-hundred-foot drop? [referring to cliff dwellings] Loyd: No worse than raising up kids where the front yard ends in a freeway.

Barbara Kingsolver
Kids, Civilization, Two

Tomorrow these villagers would carry their secret icons into the church without any priest and light the candles themselves, moving together in single-minded grace. Like the school of the fish, so driven to righteousness they could flout the law, declare the safety of their souls, then go home and destroy the evidence.

Barbara Kingsolver
Moving, Home, School
Barbara Kingsolver (2009). “The Lacuna”, p.14, Faber & Faber

Science doesn't tell us what we should do. It only tells us what is.

Barbara Kingsolver
Should
Barbara Kingsolver (2012). “Flight Behaviour”, p.258, Faber & Faber

The reason most people have kids is because they get pregnant.

Barbara Kingsolver
Children, Kids, People

Insomnia’s different,” I said. It was hard to explain this to people. “You know the light that comes on when you open the refrigerator door? Just imagine it stays on all the time, even after you close the door. That’s what it’s like in my head. The light stays on.

Barbara Kingsolver
Insomnia, Light, Doors

For scientists, reality is not optional.

Barbara Kingsolver
Reality, Scientist, Optional
Barbara Kingsolver (2012). “Flight Behaviour”, p.229, Faber & Faber

There are always more questions. Science as a process is never complete. It is not a foot race, with a finish line.... People will always be waiting at a particular finish line: journalists with their cameras, impatient crowds eager to call the race, astounded to see the scientists approach, pass the mark, and keep running. It's a common misunderstanding, he said. They conclude there was no race. As long as we won't commit to knowing everything, the presumption is we know nothing.

Barbara Kingsolver
Running, Race, Knowing Everything

I don't understand how any good art could fail to be political.

Barbara Kingsolver
Art, Political, Failing
"A life in writing: Barbara Kingsolver" by Maya Jaggi, www.theguardian.com. June 11, 2010.

In exchange for his first taste of powdered milk, Pascal showed me a tree we could climb to find a bird's nest. After we handled and examined the pink-skinned baby birds, he popped one of them into his mouth like a jujube. It seemed to please him a lot. He offered a baby bird to me, pantomiming that I should eat it. I understood perfectly well what he meant, but I refused. He did not seem disappointed to have to eat the whole brood himself.

Barbara Kingsolver
Baby, Bird, Tree

Why does a person even get up in the morning? You have breakfast, you floss your teeth so you'll have healthy gums in your old age, and then you get in your car and drive down I-10 and die. Life is so stupid I can't stand it.

Barbara Kingsolver
Morning, Stupid, Car

It's as if cats live in a seperate universe that takes up the same space as ours, but is full of facinating things like mice or sparrows or special TV programs that we can't see.

Barbara Kingsolver
Cat, Space, Special

It's the same struggle for each of us, and the same path out: the utterly simple, infinitely wise, ultimately defiant act of loving one thing and then another, loving our way back to life.

Barbara Kingsolver
Love, Wise, Struggle
Barbara Kingsolver (2011). “Small Wonder”, p.25, Faber & Faber

Mistakes wreck your life. But they make what you have. It's kind of all one. You know what Hester told me when we were working the sheep one time? She said it's no good to complain about your flock, because it's the put-together of all your past choices.

Barbara Kingsolver
Mistake, Past, Sheep
Barbara Kingsolver (2012). “Flight Behaviour”, p.308, Faber & Faber

A woman without a man -- a condition of 'manlessness' -- is defined as alone. But a single mother is less alone than the average housewife.

Barbara Kingsolver
Mother, Men, Average

The last generation's worst fears became the next one's B-grade entertainment.

Barbara Kingsolver
Generations, Lasts, Next
Barbara Kingsolver (2012). “Flight Behaviour”, p.151, Faber & Faber

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