Quote

Oh, mercy. If it catches you in the wrong frame of mind, the King James Bible can make you want to drink poison in no uncertain terms.

Barbara Kingsolver

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Barbara Kingsolver
Age: 69
Born: 1955
Born: April 8
Essayist
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Annapolis
Maryland
Make
King
Bible
Kings
Catches
Terms
Frame
Drink
James
Term
Uncertain
Wrong
Poison
Mind
Mercy

More quotes by Barbara Kingsolver

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Few people know so clearly what they want. Most people can't even think what to hope for when they throw a penny in a fountain.
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It is completely usual for me to get up in the morning, take a look around, and laugh out loud.
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it's the thing you fear most that walks beside you all the time.
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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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My way of finding a place in this world is to write one.
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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
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Being a novelist and being a mother have exactly coincided in my life: the call from my agent saying that I had a contract for my first novel - that was on my answering phone message when I got back from the hospital with my first child.
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Anybody can get worked up, if they have the intention. It's peacefulness that is hard to come by on purpose.
Barbara Kingsolver
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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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Scientific illiteracy in our populations is leaving too many of us unprepared to discuss or understand much of the damage we are wreaking on our atmosphere, our habitat, and even the food that enters our mouths.
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Children can be your heartache. But that doesn't matter, you have to go on and have them . . . it works out.
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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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Why does a person even get up in the morning? You have breakfast, you floss your teeth so you'll have healthy gums in your old age, and then you get in your car and drive down I-10 and die. Life is so stupid I can't stand it.
Barbara Kingsolver
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How strange to read of a place in a book, and then stand on it, listen to the birds sing, and spit on the cobbles if you want.
Barbara Kingsolver
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Silence has many advantages. When you do not speak, other people presume you to be deaf or feeble-minded and promptly make a show of their own limitations.
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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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
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Bitter words normally evaporate with the moisture of breath, after a quarrel. In order to become permanent, they require transcribers, reporters, complicit black hearts.
Barbara Kingsolver
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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.
Barbara Kingsolver
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Even feigning surprise, pretending it was unexpected and saying a ritual thanks, is surely wiser than just expecting everything so carelessly.
Barbara Kingsolver