Quote

It's a funny thing: people often ask how I discipline myself to write. I can't begin to understand the question. For me, the discipline is turning off the computer and leaving my desk to do something else.

Barbara Kingsolver

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Barbara Kingsolver
Age: 69
Born: 1955
Born: April 8
Essayist
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Annapolis
Maryland
Something
Asks
Desk
People
Funny
Desks
Understand
Turning
Often
Leaving
Write
Discipline
Else
Computer
Writing
Begin
Thing
Question

More quotes by Barbara Kingsolver

Image
organization is the religion of the single parent.
Barbara Kingsolver
Image
Listen. To live is to be marked. To live is to change, to acquire the words of a story, and that is the only celebration we mortals really know. In perfect stillness, frankly, I've only found sorrow.
Barbara Kingsolver
Image
You could love your crazy people, even admire them, instead of resenting that they're not self-sufficient.
Barbara Kingsolver
Image
Wherever I am, let me never forget to distinguish want from need
Barbara Kingsolver
Image
It seems very safe to me to be surrounded by green growing things and water.
Barbara Kingsolver
Image
In fact, one of the things that I really love about literary fiction is that it's one of the few kinds of writing that doesn't tell us what to think or what to buy or what to wear. We're surrounded by advertising.
Barbara Kingsolver
Image
Memory runs along deep, fixed channels in the brain, like electricity along its conduits only a cataclysm can make the electrons rear up in shock and slide over into another channel. The human mind seems doomed to believe, as simply as a rooster believes, that where we are now is the only possibility
Barbara Kingsolver
Image
Root out all the to be verbs in your prose and bludgeon them until dead. No It was or they are or I am. Don't let it be, make it happen.
Barbara Kingsolver
Image
He had senile dementia and liked to go outside naked, but he could still do two things perfectly: win at checkers and write out prescriptions.
Barbara Kingsolver
Image
Our childhood had passed over into history overnight. The transition was unnoticed by anyone but ourselves.
Barbara Kingsolver
Image
A certain feeling comes from throwing your good life away, and it is one part rapture.
Barbara Kingsolver
Image
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
Image
I considered her my ally, because, like me, she was imperfect.
Barbara Kingsolver
Image
Plants do everything animals do, but slowly. They migrate, communicate, deceive, stalk their food and, with an ostentation of styles and perfumes to put the animal kingdom to shame, they make love. It's just that catching them in flagrante delicto might require time-lapse photography.
Barbara Kingsolver
Image
The last generation's worst fears became the next one's B-grade entertainment.
Barbara Kingsolver
Image
a meaningless phrase repeated again and again begins to resemble truth.
Barbara Kingsolver
Image
Illusions mistaken for truth are the pavement under our feet. They are what we call civilization.
Barbara Kingsolver
Image
I know I have to write about the things that keep me awake at night.
Barbara Kingsolver
Image
Literature sucks you into another psyche. So the creation of empathy necessarily influences how you'll behave to other people.
Barbara Kingsolver
Image
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