It kills you to see them grow up. But I guess it would kill you quicker if they didn't. Barbara Kingsolver More Quotes by Barbara Kingsolver More Quotes From Barbara Kingsolver It's terrible to lose somebody, but it's also true that some people never have anybody to lose, and I think that's got to be so much worse. Barbara Kingsolver terriblepeoplethinking Will you explain to me why people encourage delusional behaviour in children, and medicate it in adults? Barbara Kingsolver adultschildrenpeople You think you're the foreigner here, and I'm the American, and I just look the other way while the President or somebody sends down this and that . . . to torture people with. But nobody asked my permission, okay? Sometimes I feel like I'm a foreigner, too. Barbara Kingsolver presidentpeoplethinking 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. You keep your eyes open, you see this damned-to-hell world you got born into, and you ask yourself, 'What life can I live that will let me breathe in & out and love somebody or something and not run off screaming into the woods? Barbara Kingsolver eyerunningworld Friends, there is nothing like your own family to make you appreciate strangers! Barbara Kingsolver appreciatestranger Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It's the one and only thing you have to offer. Barbara Kingsolver being-alonewritinglife It's what you do that makes your soul. Barbara Kingsolver souldreamrabbits When I look out the window, I exhale a prayer of thanks for the color green, for my children's safety, for the simple acts of faith like planting a garden that helped see us through another spring, another summer. And I inhale some kind of promise to protect my kids' hopes and good intentions we began with in this country. Freedom of speech, the protection of diversity - these are the most important ingredients of American civil life and my own survival. If I ever took them for granted, I don't know. Barbara Kingsolver summermotivationalcountry The arc of history is longer than human vision. It bends. We abolished slavery, we granted universal suffrage. We have done hard things before. And every time it took a terrible fight between people who could not imagine changing the rules, and those who said, 'We already did. We have made the world new.' The hardest part will be to convince yourself of the possibilities, and hang on. Barbara Kingsolver visionfightingpeople Poetry feels like a country I visit without a passport, where I look around furtively, grab hold of something precious, and try to smuggle it back across the border. Any poem I get written down feels like contraband to me. Barbara Kingsolver borderstryingcountry April is the cruelest month, T.S. Eliot wrote, by which I think he meant (among other things) that springtime makes people crazy. We expect too much, the world burgeons with promises it can't keep, all passion is really a setup, and we're doomed to get our hearts broken yet again. I agree, and would further add: Who cares? Every spring I go out there anyway, around the bend, unconditionally. ... Come the end of the dark days, I am more than joyful. I'm nuts. Barbara Kingsolver passioncrazyspring There is no point treating a depressed person as though she were just feeling sad, saying, 'There now, hang on, you'll get over it.' Sadness is more or less like a head cold- with patience, it passes. Depression is like cancer. Barbara Kingsolver cancersadnessdepression I'm never going to tell the reader what to believe; I'm going to examine these characters that believe different ways, and examine their motives. Barbara Kingsolver characterbelieveway To be hopeful, to embrace one possibility after another--that is surely the basic instinct. Baser even than hate, the thing with teeth, which can be stilled with a tone of voice or stunned by beauty. If the whole world of the living has to turn on the single point of remaining alive, that pointed endurance is the poetry of hope. The thing with feathers. Barbara Kingsolver hopefulvoicehate I prefer to remain anomalous. Barbara Kingsolver ...nothing momentous comes in this world unless it comes on the shoulders of kindness. Barbara Kingsolver this-worldkindnessworld Now I'm starting to think he wasn't supposed to be my whole life, he was just this doorway to me. Barbara Kingsolver startingdoorwaysthinking God is frightful, God is great--you pick. I choose this: God is in the details, the completely unnecessary miracles sometimes tossed up as stars to guide us. They are the promise of good fortune in a cloudless day, and the animals in the clouds; look hard enough, and you'll see them. Don't ask if they're real. Barbara Kingsolver starsrealanimal I've about decided that's the main thing that separates happy people from the other people: the feeling that you're a practical item, with a use, like a sweater or a socket wrench. Barbara Kingsolver sweatersfeelingspeople Literature is one of the few kinds of writing in the world that does not tell you what to buy, want, see, be, or believe. It's more like conversation, raising new questions and inspiring you to answer them for yourself. Barbara Kingsolver writingbelievemoving
