If you're standing in the manure pile, it's somebody's job to mention the stink. Barbara Kingsolver More Quotes by Barbara Kingsolver More Quotes From Barbara Kingsolver I have seen women looking at jewelry ads with a misty eye and one hand resting on the heart, and I only know what they're feeling because that's how I read the seed catalogs in January. Barbara Kingsolver eye heart hands It is harrowing for me to try to teach 20-year-old students, who earnestly want to improve their writing. The best I can think to tell them is: Quit smoking, and observe posted speed limits. This will improve your odds of getting old enough to be wise. Barbara Kingsolver wise writing thinking A writer's occupational hazard: I think of eavesdropping as minding my business. Barbara Kingsolver hazards busybodies thinking the conspicuous consumption of limited resources has yet to be accepted widely as a spiritual error, or even bad manners Barbara Kingsolver limited-resources errors spiritual The average food item on a U.S. grocery shelf has traveled farther than most families go on their annual vacations. Barbara Kingsolver vacation animal average It's the one thing we never quite get over: that we contain our own future. Barbara Kingsolver get-over one-thing 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. Barbara Kingsolver running life funny 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 growing-up friday kids Don’t try to make life a mathematics problem with yourself in the center and everything coming out equal. When you’re good, bad things can still happen. And if you’re bad, you can still be lucky. Barbara Kingsolver lucky trying life 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. Barbara Kingsolver voice dog water What I want is so simple I almost can't say it: elementary kindness. Barbara Kingsolver simple want kindness The truth needs so little rehearsal. Barbara Kingsolver honesty truth needs There is no perfect time to write. There is only now. Barbara Kingsolver perfect writing With all due respect for the wondrous ways people have invented to amuse themselves and one another on paved surfaces, I find that this exodus from the land makes me unspeakably sad. I think of the children who will never know, intuitively, that a flower is a plant's way of making love, or what silence sounds like, or that trees breathe out what we breathe in. Barbara Kingsolver nature flower children 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. Barbara Kingsolver pain spiritual meaningful It's frightening when things you love appear suddenly changed from what you have always known. Barbara Kingsolver things-you-love frightening changed This is how Americans think. You believe that if something terrible happens to someone, they must have deserved it. Barbara Kingsolver united-states believe thinking If you want sweet dreams, you've got to live a sweet life. Barbara Kingsolver dream want sweet The happiest people are the ones with the most community. Barbara Kingsolver community people Everything you're sure is right can be wrong in another place. Barbara Kingsolver travel
