Quote

You always need that spark of imagination. Sometimes I'm midway through a book before it happens. However, I don't wait for the muse to descend, I sit down every day and I work when I'm not delivering lambs on the farm.

Barbara Kingsolver

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Barbara Kingsolver
Age: 69
Born: 1955
Born: April 8
Essayist
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Annapolis
Maryland
Needs
Wait
Descend
Work
However
Lambs
Every
Imagination
Delivering
Always
Waiting
Spark
Happens
Farm
Book
Muse
Need
Sparks
Sometimes
Farms
Midway

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Food is the rare moral arena in which the ethical choice is generally the one more likely to make you groan with pleasure.
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organization is the religion of the single parent.
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I think the most interesting parts of human experience might be the sparks that come from that sort of chipping flint of cultures rubbing against each other.
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I know how people are, with their habits of mind. Most will sail through from cradle to grave with a conscience clean as snow...I know people. Most have no earthly notion of the price of a snow-white conscience.
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I've never gotten over high school, to the extent that I'm still a little surprised that my friends want to hang out with me.
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Wherever I am, let me never forget to distinguish want from need
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Ah, the mysterious croak. Here today, gone tomorrow. It's the best reason I can think of to throw open the blinds and risk belief. Right now, this minute, time to move out into the grief and glory. High tide.
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If I had to give up my life for anything, it would have to have the resilience of hope, the elation of new literacy, the brilliant life of a field of flowers, the elementary kindness of bread. Nothing short of that. It would have to be something as sure as love.
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I struggle with confidence, every time. I’m never completely sure I can write another book. Maybe my scope is too grand, my questions too hard, surely readers won’t want to follow me here. A novel is like a cathedral, it knocks you down to size when you enter into it.
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I used to think religion was just more of the same thing. Dump responsibility on the big guy. Now I see an importance in that. It's a relief to accept that not everything is under your control.
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Value is not made of money, but a tender balance of expectation and longing.
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If you're standing in the manure pile, it's somebody's job to mention the stink.
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Illusions mistaken for truth are the pavement under our feet. They are what we call civilization.
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Most of the girls my age, or even younger, have babies. They appear way too young to be married, till you look in their eyes. Then you'll see it. Their eyes look happy and sad at the same time, but unexcited by anything, shifting easily off to the side as if they've already seen most of what there is. Married eyes.
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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.
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Finally, cooking is good citizenship. It's the only way to get serious about putting locally raised foods into your diet, which keeps farmlands healthy and grocery money in the neighborhood.
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I have my own sheep and I literally sheer the sheep and knot sweaters for friends and family from scratch.
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The gods you do not pay are the ones that can curse you best.
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The wrong words are impossible when there are no words.
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A first child is your own best foot forward, and how you do cheer those little feet as they strike out. You examine every turn of flesh for precocity, and crow it to the world. But the last one: the baby who trails her scent like a flag of surrender through your life when there will be no more coming after--oh, that' s love by a different name.
Barbara Kingsolver