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Illusions mistaken for truth are the pavement under our feet. They are what we call civilization.

Barbara Kingsolver

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Barbara Kingsolver
Age: 69
Born: 1955
Born: April 8
Essayist
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Annapolis
Maryland
Illusions
Mistaken
Illusion
Civilization
Feet
Call
Truth
Pavement

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My father wears his faith like the bronze breastplate of God's footsoldiers while our mother's is more like a good cloth coat with a secondhand fit.
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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.
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The longer you live, the more likely you are to have something to say.
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If we can't, as artists, improve on real life, we should put down our pencils and go bake bread.
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In the places that call me out, I know I'll recover my wordless childhood trust in the largeness of life and its willingness to take me in.
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In the long run, most of us spend about fifteen minutes total in the entanglements of passion, and the rest of our days looking back on it, humming the tune.
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People ask without wanting to know.
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God, why does a mortal man have children? It is senseless to love anything this much.
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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.
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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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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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The death of something living is the price of our own survival, and we pay it again and again. We have no choice. It is the one solemn promise every life on earth is born and bound to keep.
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Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you figure out what you have to say.
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the conspicuous consumption of limited resources has yet to be accepted widely as a spiritual error, or even bad manners
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Thanks for this day, for all birds safe in their nests, for whatever this is, for life.
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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.
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Wherever I am, let me never forget to distinguish want from need
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Be careful what you give children, for sooner or later you are sure to get it back.
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You can be as earnest and ridiculous as you need to be, if you don't attempt it in isolation. The ridiculously earnest are known to travel in groups. And they are known to change the world.
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Beginning a novel is always hard. It feels like going nowhere. I always have to write at least 100 pages that go into the trashcan before it finally begins to work. It's discouraging, but necessary to write those pages. I try to consider them pages -100 to zero of the novel.
Barbara Kingsolver