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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.

Barbara Kingsolver

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Barbara Kingsolver
Age: 69
Born: 1955
Born: April 8
Essayist
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Annapolis
Maryland
Truth
Mistake
Part
Story
Nothing
Half
Believe
Born
Men
History
Genes
Time
Father
Believed
Tell
Mistakes
Stories
Bible

More quotes by Barbara Kingsolver

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Every minute with a child takes seven minutes off your life.
Barbara Kingsolver
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Many of us who aren't farmers or gardeners still have some element of farm nostalgia in our family past, real or imagined: a secret longing for some connection to a life where a rooster crows in the yard.
Barbara Kingsolver
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A good title holds magic, some cognitive dissonance, a little grit between the teeth, but above all it is the jumping-off place into wonder.
Barbara Kingsolver
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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.
Barbara Kingsolver
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the conspicuous consumption of limited resources has yet to be accepted widely as a spiritual error, or even bad manners
Barbara Kingsolver
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I'm never going to tell the reader what to believe I'm going to examine these characters that believe different ways, and examine their motives.
Barbara Kingsolver
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I believe with all my heart in delivering on my contract with my readers. They've got plenty of other things to do, so I had better give them a reason to turn every one of these 550 pages. This is my promise: I solemnly swear I'll make you laugh out loud at least once, cry a little in private, and burn whatever you left on the stove.
Barbara Kingsolver
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How pointless life could be, what a foolish business of inventing things to love, just so you could dread losing them.
Barbara Kingsolver
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restraint equals indulgence
Barbara Kingsolver
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If you ask me, when something extraordinary shows up in your life in the middle of the night, you give it a name and make it the best home you can.
Barbara Kingsolver
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They all attended Hester's church, which Dellarobia viewed as a complicated pyramid scheme of moral debt and credit resting ultimately on the shoulders of the Lord, but rife with middle managers.
Barbara Kingsolver
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Wherever I am, let me never forget to distinguish want from need
Barbara Kingsolver
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Terms like that, 'Humane Society,' are devised with people like me in mind, who don't care to dwell on what happens to the innocent.
Barbara Kingsolver
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But kids don't stay with you if you do it right. It's the one job where, the better you are, the more surely you won't be needed in the long run.
Barbara Kingsolver
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Pain reaches the heart with electrical speed, but truth moves to the heart as slowly as a glacier.
Barbara Kingsolver
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Everything truly important is washable.
Barbara Kingsolver
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If someone does learn about the world from reading a novel of mine, that makes me very happy. It's probably not what brings me into the novel in the first place - I usually am pulled in by some big question about the world and human nature that I'm not going to resolve in the course of the novel. But I'm very devoted to getting my facts straight.
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.
Barbara Kingsolver
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Last time I talked to her she didn't sound like herself. She's depressed. It's awful what happens when people run out of money. They start thinking they're no good.
Barbara Kingsolver
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Literature sucks you into another psyche. So the creation of empathy necessarily influences how you'll behave to other people.
Barbara Kingsolver