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
Work
However
Lambs
Every
Imagination
Delivering
Always
Waiting
Spark
Happens
Farm
Book
Muse
Need
Sparks
Sometimes
Farms
Midway
Needs
Wait
Descend

More quotes by Barbara Kingsolver

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Nine-tenths of human law is about possession.
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He was my father. I own half his genes, and all of his history. Believe this: the mistakes are part of the story. I am born of a man who believed he could tell nothing but the truth, while he set down for all time the Poisonwood Bible.
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My morning begins with trying not to get up before the sun rises. But when I do, it's because my head is too full of words, and I just need to get to my desk and start dumping them into a file. I always wake with sentences pouring into my head.
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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.
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Misunderstanding is my cornerstone. It's everyone's, come to think of it. Illusions mistaken for truth are the pavement under our feet.
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The substance of grief is not imaginary. It's as real as rope or the absence of air, and like both those things, it can kill.
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Be still, and the world is bound to turn herself inside out to entertain you. Everywhere you look, joyful noise is clanging to drown out quiet desperation.
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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.
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If it's important, your heart remembers.
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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.
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Pain reaches the heart with electrical speed, but truth moves to the heart as slowly as a glacier.
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You see mother, you had no life of your own. They have no idea. One has only a life of one's own.
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I grew up aware of all the people I depended on and who depended on me.
Barbara Kingsolver
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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.
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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.
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I can think of no honorable answer. Why must some of us deliberate between brands of toothpaste, while others deliberate between damp dirt and bone dust to quiet the fire of an empty stomach lining? There is nothing about the United States I can really explain to this child of another world.
Barbara Kingsolver
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A dog can't think that much about what he's doing, he just does what feels right.
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Southern Appalachians have been ridiculed since the country began. In fiction, they're usually depicted in a cartoonish manner. The region is poor, and very suspicious of outsiders, so there's a sort of 'us versus them' situation. They're easy to poke fun at.
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It kills you to see them grow up. But I guess it would kill you quicker if they didn't.
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Humans can be fairly ridiculous animals.
Barbara Kingsolver