I don't know what rituals my kids will carry into adulthood, whether they'll grow up attached to homemade pizza on Friday nights, or the scent of peppers roasting over a fire, or what. I do know that flavors work their own ways under the skin, into the heart of longing. Where my kids are concerned I find myself hoping for the simplest things: that if someday they crave orchards where their kids can climb into the branches and steal apples, the world will have trees enough with arms to receive them.

Barbara Kingsolver

Categorized in : Kids Friday Growing Up

Hope is a renewable option:

Barbara Kingsolver

dream running inspiring

In my own worst seasons I've come back from the colorless world of despair by forcing myself to look hard, for a long time, at a single glorious thing: a flame of red geranium outside my bedroom window. And then another: my daughter in a yellow dress. And another: the perfect outline of a full, dark sphere behind the crescent moon. Until I learned to be in love with my life again. Like a stroke victim retraining new parts of the brain to grasp lost skills, I have taught myself joy, over and over again(15).

Barbara Kingsolver

daughter dark life

Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say.

Barbara Kingsolver

creativity writing people

Maybe life doesn't get any better than this, or any worse, and what we get is just what we're willing to find: small wonders, where they grow.

Barbara Kingsolver

willing grows wonder

Every one of us is called upon, perhaps many times, to start a new life. A frightening diagnosis, a marriage, a move, loss of a job...And onward full-tilt we go, pitched and wrecked and absurdly resolute, driven in spite of everything to make good on a new shore. 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.

Barbara Kingsolver

loss jobs moving

Thanks for this day, for all birds safe in their nests, for whatever this is, for life.

Barbara Kingsolver

nests safe bird

One of the very first things I figured out about life...is that it's better to be a hopeful person than a cynical, grumpy one, because you have to live in the same world either way, and if you're hopeful, you have more fun.

Barbara Kingsolver

hopeful fun positive

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.

Barbara Kingsolver

life-lesson hope dream

In a world as wrong as this one, all we can do is make things as right as we can.

Barbara Kingsolver

can-do life world

The most important thing about a person is always the thing you don't know.

Barbara Kingsolver

important persons knows

Human manners are wildly inconsistent; plenty of people have said so. But this one takes the cake: the manner in which we're allowed to steal from future generations, while commanding them not to do that to us, and rolling our eyes at anyone who is tediously PC enough to point that out. The conspicious consumption of limited resources has yet to be accepted widely as a spirtual error, or even bad manners.

Barbara Kingsolver

cake errors eye

Honk if you love Jesus, text while driving if you want to meet up.

Barbara Kingsolver

driving want jesus

Recall that whatever lofty things you might accomplish today, you will do them only because you first ate something that grew out of the dirt.

Barbara Kingsolver

dirt might today

Patriotism threatens free speech with death. It is infuriated by thoughtful hesitation, constructive criticism of our leaders and pleas for peace. It despises people of foreign birth. It has specifically blamed homosexuals, feminists and the American Civil Liberties Union. In other words, the American flag stands for intimidation, censorship, violence, bigotry, sexism, homophobia and shoving the Constitution through a paper shredder. Whom are we calling terrorists here?

Barbara Kingsolver

thoughtful feminist people

A miscarriage is a natural and common event. All told, probably more women have lost a child from this world than haven't. Most don't mention it, and they go on from day to day as if it hadn't happened, so people imagine a woman in this situation never really knew or loved what she had. But ask her sometime: how old would your child be now? And she'll know.

Barbara Kingsolver

miscarriage love children

You don't think you'll live past it and you don't really. The person you were is gone. But the half of you that's still alive wakes up one day and takes over again.

Barbara Kingsolver

grief past thinking

Good fiction creates empathy. A novel takes you somewhere and asks you to look through the eyes of another person, to live another life.

Barbara Kingsolver

empathy eye looks

That was when we smelled the rain. It was so strong it seemed like more than just a smell. When we stretched out our hands we could practically feel it rising up from the ground. I don’t know how a person could ever describe that scent.

Barbara Kingsolver

strong rain hands

Your dreams, what you hope for and all that, it's not separate from your life. It grows right up out of it.

Barbara Kingsolver

your-dreams grows dream

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.

Barbara Kingsolver

library soul mind