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God doesn’t need to punish us. He just grants us a long enough life to punish ourselves.

Barbara Kingsolver

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Barbara Kingsolver
Age: 69
Born: 1955
Born: April 8
Essayist
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Annapolis
Maryland
Life
Grants
Religious
Religion
Doesn
Need
Enough
Needs
Long
Punish

More quotes by Barbara Kingsolver

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It's a great freedom to give up on love, and get on with everything else.
Barbara Kingsolver
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The standard approach has been to pump up the dosage of chemicals ... Twenty percent of these approved-for-use pesticides are listed by the EPA as carcinogenic in humans.
Barbara Kingsolver
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I considered her my ally, because, like me, she was imperfect.
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People love to read about sins and errors, but not their own.
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Libraries are the one American institution you shouldn't rip off.
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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.
Barbara Kingsolver
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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.
Barbara Kingsolver
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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
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This story about good food begins in a quick-stop convenience market.
Barbara Kingsolver
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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.
Barbara Kingsolver
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In a world as wrong as this one, all we can do is make things as right as we can.
Barbara Kingsolver
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Households that have lost the soul of cooking from their routines may not know what they are missing: the song of a stir-fry sizzle, the small talk of clinking measuring spoons, the yeasty scent of rising dough, the painting of flavors onto a pizza before it slides into the oven.
Barbara Kingsolver
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Sometimes I prayed for Baby Jesus to make me good, but Baby Jesus didn't.
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.
Barbara Kingsolver
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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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One of the very first things I figured out about life...is that it's better to be a hopeful person than a cynical, grumpy one, because you have to live in the same world either way, and if you're hopeful, you have more fun.
Barbara Kingsolver
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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
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Want is a thing that unfurls unbidden like fungus, opening large upon itself, stopless, filling the sky. But needs, from one day to the next, are few enough to fit in a bucket, with room enough left to rattle like brittle brush in a dry wind.
Barbara Kingsolver
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Nine-tenths of human law is about possession.
Barbara Kingsolver
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Literature is one of the few kinds of writing in the world that does not tell you what to buy, want, see, be, or believe. It's more like conversation, raising new questions and inspiring you to answer them for yourself.
Barbara Kingsolver