How pointless life could be, what a foolish business of inventing things to love, just so you could dread losing them. Barbara Kingsolver More Quotes by Barbara Kingsolver More Quotes From Barbara Kingsolver it takes your sleeping self years to catch up to where you really are. ... when you go on a trip, in your dreams you will still be home. Then after you've come home you'll dream of where you were. It's a kind of jet lag of the consciousness. Barbara Kingsolver dream home sleep School is about two parts ABCs to fifty parts Where Do I Stand in the Great Pecking Order of Humankind. Barbara Kingsolver education order school Scientific illiteracy in our populations is leaving too many of us unprepared to discuss or understand much of the damage we are wreaking on our atmosphere, our habitat, and even the food that enters our mouths. Barbara Kingsolver atmosphere leaving science Your own family resemblances are a frustrating code, most easily read by those who know you least. Barbara Kingsolver code frustrating family 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 sheep past it's the thing you fear most that walks beside you all the time. Barbara Kingsolver beside-you walks fear 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 knowing-everything race running For scientists, reality is not optional. Barbara Kingsolver optional scientist reality Once the rains abated, my father's garden thrived in the heat like an unleashed temper. Barbara Kingsolver garden rain father Global commerce is driven by a single conviction: the inalienable right to earn profit, regardless of any human cost. Barbara Kingsolver greed cost money It's one thing to carry your life wherever you go. Another thing to always go looking for it somewhere else. Barbara Kingsolver one-thing somewhere-else Literature sucks you into another psyche. So the creation of empathy necessarily influences how you'll behave to other people. Barbara Kingsolver empathy literature people 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. I always wake with sentences pouring into my head. Barbara Kingsolver morning trying needs I live in a rural part of Virginia surrounded by farms and farmers. Barbara Kingsolver farmers virginia farms Maybe he's been in Africa so long he has forgotten that we Christians have our own system of marriage, and it is called Monotony. Barbara Kingsolver christian forgotten long What we lose in our great human exodus from the land is a rooted sense, as deep and intangible as religious faith, of why we need to hold on to the wild and beautiful places that once surrounded us. Barbara Kingsolver land religious beautiful But we've all ended up giving body and soul to Africa, one way or another. Even Adah, who's becoming an expert in tropical epidemiology and strange new viruses. Each of us got our heart buried in six feet of African dirt; we are all co-conspirators here. I mean, all of us, not just my family. So what do you do now? You get to find your own way to dig out a heart and shake it off and hold it up to the light again. Barbara Kingsolver light heart mean But I've swallowed my pride before, that's for sure. I'm practically lined with my mistakes on the inside like a bad-wallpapered bathroom. Barbara Kingsolver bathroom pride mistake ...trust in Creation which is made fresh daily and doesn’t suffer in translation. This God does not work in especially mysterious ways. The sun here rises and sets at six exactly. A caterpillar becomes a butterfly. A bird raises its brood in the forest and a greenheart tree will only grow from a greenheart seed. He brings drought sometimes followed by torrential rains and if these things aren’t always what I had in mind, they aren’t my punishment either. They’re rewards, let’s say for the patience of a seed. Barbara Kingsolver punishment butterfly rain But still, I’d be darned if I was going to be one of those Americans who stomp around Italy barking commands in ever-louder English. I was going to be one of those Americans who traversed Italy with my forehead knit in concentration, divining wordsw from their Latin roots and answering by wedging French cognates into Italian pronunciations spliced onto a standard Spanish verb conjugation. Barbara Kingsolver italian latin animal
