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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
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Barbara Kingsolver
Age: 69
Born: 1955
Born: April 8
Essayist
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Annapolis
Maryland
Someone
Opposites
Every
Capacity
Really
Spiritual
Pain
Understand
Meanness
War
Empathy
Lost
Opposite
Else
Meaningful
More quotes by Barbara Kingsolver
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
I think that when people read fiction, they're really reading for wisdom. I am. That's what most of us really love. If we read a novel that rocks our world, it's because there's something in it that we didn't know already. Not just information but really wisdom - sort of what to do with our information. And wisdom comes from experience.
Barbara Kingsolver
Of the two hundred bones in the human body, more than a quarter are in the foot. It is a more complicated instrument than an automobile transmission, and it is treated with far less consideration.
Barbara Kingsolver
The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for!
Barbara Kingsolver
What you lose in blindness is the space around you, the place where you are, and without that you might not exist. You could be nowhere at all.
Barbara Kingsolver
I believe with all my heart in delivering on my contract with my readers. They've got plenty of other things to do, so I had better give them a reason to turn every one of these 550 pages. This is my promise: I solemnly swear I'll make you laugh out loud at least once, cry a little in private, and burn whatever you left on the stove.
Barbara Kingsolver
there are people who read my work and accuse me of being political! As far as I'm concerned that's like accusing a dog of having a bark!
Barbara Kingsolver
What we end up calling history is a kind of knife, slicing down through time. A few people are hard enough to bend its edge. But most won't even stand close to the blade. I'm one of those. We don't bend anything.
Barbara Kingsolver
It's one thing to carry your life wherever you go. Another thing to always go looking for it somewhere else.
Barbara Kingsolver
But children robbed of love will dwell on magic.
Barbara Kingsolver
We're animals. We're born like every other mammal and we live our whole lives around disguised animal thoughts.
Barbara Kingsolver
It's frightening when things you love appear suddenly changed from what you have always known.
Barbara Kingsolver
People love to read about sins and errors, but not their own.
Barbara Kingsolver
I learned to produce whether I wanted to or not. It would be easy to say oh, I have writer's block, oh, I have to wait for my muse. I don't. Chain that muse to your desk and get the job done.
Barbara Kingsolver
I concentrate on character, theme, language, structure, voice. It actually surprises me that no matter what I write, people declare it intently political. I'm just writing about the world I know, as it is. Wounds and griefs included.
Barbara Kingsolver
Misunderstanding is my cornerstone. It's everyone's, come to think of it. Illusions mistaken for truth are the pavement under our feet.
Barbara Kingsolver
Americans who read and think are patriots of the first order. The kind who know enough to roll their eyes whenever anyone tries to claim sole custody of the flag and weild it as a blunt instrument. There are as many ways to love America as there are Americans, and our country needs us all.
Barbara Kingsolver
Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, writers will go to stupefying lengths to get the infernal roar of words out of their skulls and onto paper.
Barbara Kingsolver
The last generation's worst fears became the next one's B-grade entertainment.
Barbara Kingsolver
...our best task is to move forward without insisting others slide backward.
Barbara Kingsolver