Mr. Shepherd, ye cannot stop a bad thought from coming into your head. But ye need not pull up a chair and bide it sit down." - Mrs. Brown Barbara Kingsolver More Quotes by Barbara Kingsolver More Quotes From Barbara Kingsolver I attempted briefly to consecrate myself in the public library, believing every crack in my soul could be chinked with a book. Barbara Kingsolver soul believe book We must surely appear to the world as exactly what we are: a nation that organizes its economy around consuming twice as much oil as it produces, and around the profligate wastefulness of the wars and campaigns required to defend such consumption. In recent years we have defined our national interest largely in terms of the oil fields and pipelines we need to procure fuel. Barbara Kingsolver oil war years The writing has been on the wall for some years now, but we are a nation illiterate in the language of the wall. The writing just gets bigger. Something will eventually bring down the charming, infuriating naïveté of Americans that allows us our blithe consumption and cheerful ignorance of the secret ugliness that bring us whatever we want. Barbara Kingsolver wall ignorance writing There are days when I am envious of my hens: Barbara Kingsolver eggs perfect life A flower is your cousin...Sometimes a person has got to take a life, like a chicken's or a hog's when you need it...But nobody is so hungry they need to kill a flower. Cherokee great-grandmother Barbara Kingsolver cousin grandmother flower Fiction is a sort of inter-human magic, allowing you to travel into a scene and feel it tingle on your skin. Barbara Kingsolver magic skins fiction A wife is the earth itself, changing hands, bearing scars. Barbara Kingsolver wife earth hands Every minute with a child takes seven minutes off your life. Barbara Kingsolver seven minutes children The march of human progress seemed mainly a matter of getting over that initial shock of being here. Barbara Kingsolver march progress matter What life can I live that will let me breathe in and out and love somebody or something and not run off screaming into the woods? Barbara Kingsolver woods and-love running The important thing isn't the house. It's the ability to make it. You carry that in your brain and in your hands, wherever you go. Barbara Kingsolver house brain hands Like Daniel she enteres the lions' den, but lacking Daniel's pure and unblemished soul, Ada is spiced with the flavors of vice that make for a tasty meal. Pure and unblemished souls must taste very bland, with an aftertaste of bitterness. Barbara Kingsolver meals vices soul Tomorrow these villagers would carry their secret icons into the church without any priest and light the candles themselves, moving together in single-minded grace. Like the school of the fish, so driven to righteousness they could flout the law, declare the safety of their souls, then go home and destroy the evidence. Barbara Kingsolver home school moving What keeps me awake at the wheel is the thrill of trying something completely new with each book. I’m not a risk-taker in life, generally speaking, but as a writer I definitely choose the fast car, the impossible rock face, the free fall. Barbara Kingsolver rocks book fall We agreed with him in principal - we were little scientists, born and bred. But children robbed of love will dwell on magic. Barbara Kingsolver magic littles children Beginning a novel is always hard. It feels like going nowhere. I always have to write at least 100 pages that go into the trashcan before it finally begins to work. It's discouraging, but necessary to write those pages. I try to consider them pages -100 to zero of the novel. Barbara Kingsolver zero writing trying We came from Bethlehem, Georgia bearing Betty Crocker cake mixes into the jungle. Barbara Kingsolver bethlehem georgia cake That's how it is: some people are content to wait till you ask, while others jump right in with the whole story. Barbara Kingsolver waiting stories people A choir of seedlings arching their necks out of rotted tree stumps, sucking life out of death. I am the forest's conscience, but remember, the forest eats itself and lives forever. Barbara Kingsolver forever forests tree On the day I swore to uphold the Hippocratic oath, the small hairs on the back of my neck stood up as I waited for lightning to strike. Who was I, vowing calmly among all these necktied young men to steal life out of nature's jaws, every old time we got half a chance and a paycheck?... I could not accept the contract: that every child born human upon this earth comes with a guarantee of perfect health and old age clutched in its small fist. Barbara Kingsolver hair men children
