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"50 Barbara Kingsolver Quotes & Sayings

      American     /     View profile
Born: 8 April 1955 | Novelist | Essayist | Poet |

Terms like that, 'Humane Society,' are devised with people like me in mind, who don't care to dwell on what happens to the innocent.

Terms Like That Humane
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Libraries are the one American institution you shouldn't rip off.

Libraries Are The One
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The truth needs so little rehearsal.

The Truth Needs So
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We're animals. We're born like every other mammal and we live our whole lives around disguised animal thoughts.

We Are Animals Born
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Wars and elections are both too big and too small to matter in the long run. The daily work - that goes on, it adds up.

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

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

Kills You To Watch
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Few people know so clearly what they want. Most people can't even think what to hope for when they throw a penny in a fountain.

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

Pain Reaches Heart Electrical
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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.

What Keeps You Going
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People's dreams are made out of what they do all day. The same way a dog that runs after rabbits will dream of rabbits. It's what you do that makes your soul, not the other way around.

People's Dreams Are Made
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The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof.

The Very Least You
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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.

What You Loose Blindness
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The important thing isn't the house. It's the ability to make it.

The House Important Thing
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Memory is a complicated thing, a relative to truth, but not its twin.

Memory Is Complicated Thing
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Sometimes the strength of motherhood is greater than natural laws.

Sometimes The Strength Motherhood
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I'm of a fearsome mind to throw my arms around every living librarian who crosses my path, on behalf of the souls they never knew they saved.

Fearsome Mind Throw My
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Stop a minute, right where you are. Relax your shoulders, shake your head and spine like a dog shaking off cold water. Tell that imperious voice in your head to be still.

Stop Minute Right Where
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To be hopeful, to embrace one possibility after another that is surely the basic instinct - crying out: High tide! Time to move out into the glorious debris. Time to take this life for what it is!

Hopeful To Embrace One
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Small change, small wonders - these are the currency of my endurance and ultimately of my life.

Small Change Wonders These
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I do my best work if I think about what it is I have to offer.

Best Work Do My
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I never think that anything I'm writing is bluntly political in any way. I'm not going for commentary.

I Never Think Anything
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Fiction and essays can create empathy for the theoretical stranger.

Fiction Essays Can Create
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What a writer can do, what a fiction writer or a poet or an essay writer can do is re-engage people with their own humanity.

What A Writer Do
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When you pick up a novel from the bed side table, you put down your own life at the same time and you become another person for the duration.

When You Pick Up
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Empathy is really the opposite of spiritual meanness. It's the capacity to understand that every war is both won and lost. And that someone else's pain is as meaningful as your own.

Empathy Really The Opposite
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It seems very safe to me to be surrounded by green growing things and water.

Seems Very Safe Me
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There's always a part of your nation's history that you haven't been told that... has a powerful impact on how you yourself may behave and may believe.

There's Always Part Your
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I'm not pretending to be ingenuous; I know what I'm doing.

Not Pretending Be Ingenious
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I don't understand how any good art could fail to be political.

Don't Understand How Good
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Good fiction creates empathy. A novel takes you somewhere and asks you to look through the eyes of another person, to live another life.

Good Novels Fiction Creates
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Literature sucks you into another psyche. So the creation of empathy necessarily influences how you'll behave to other people.

Literature Sucks You Into
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Every time I write a new novel about something sombre and sobering and terrible I think, 'oh Lord, they're not going to want to go here'.

Every Time Write New
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I can count all the ways in which being a mother has enriched my understanding of the world, of character, my sense of the future and my attachment to it.

Count All The Way
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I've always seen the world through the eyes of a scientist. I love the predictable outcomes that science gives us, the control over the world that that can render.

Always Seen The World
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I grew up aware of all the people I depended on and who depended on me.

Grew Up Aware All
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I suppose that is my central obsession. What we owe to society, what we owe to ourselves.

Suppose That My Central
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At home, growing up, we weren't really poor. We had everything we needed, we just didn't have what we wanted.

Home Growing Up Weren't
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I used to think religion was just more of the same thing. Dump responsibility on the big guy. Now I see an importance in that. It's a relief to accept that not everything is under your control.

Used Think Religion Just
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Readers of fiction read, I think, for a deeper embrace of the world, of reality. And that's brave. I never get over being thankful for that - for the courage of my readers.

Readers Fiction Read Think
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My morning begins with trying not to get up before the sun rises. But when I do, it's because my head is too full of words, and I just need to get to my desk and start dumping them into a file.

Morning Begins With Trying
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It's a funny thing: people often ask how I discipline myself to write. I can't begin to understand the question. For me, the discipline is turning off the computer and leaving my desk to do something else.

It's Funny Thing People
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For me, writing time has always been precious, something I wait for and am eager for and make the best use of. That's probably why I get up so early and have writing time in the quiet dawn hours, when no one needs me.

For Me Writing Always
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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.

Every Time Step Onto
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Motherhood is so sentimentalised and romanticised in our culture. It's practically against the law to say there are moments in the day when you hate your children. Everyone actually has those moments.

Motherhood So Sentimentalised Romanticism
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I love developing children as characters. Children rarely have important roles in literary fiction - they are usually defined as cute or precious, or they create a plot by being kidnapped or dying.

Love Developing Children Characters
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After 'The Poisonwood Bible' was published, several people believed that my parents were missionaries, which could not be further from the truth.

After Poisonous Bible Was
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Most every book I bring into the world is like birthing a baby; it's a lot of effort!

Most Every Book Bring
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The first sentence of a book is a promise.

First Sentence Book Promise
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I live in a rural part of Virginia surrounded by farms and farmers.

Live Rural Part Virginia
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Barbara Kingsolver Quotes & Sayings