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you can't really know the person standing before you, because always there is some missing piece

Barbara Kingsolver

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Barbara Kingsolver
Age: 69
Born: 1955
Born: April 8
Essayist
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Annapolis
Maryland
Really
Always
Piece
Standing
Missing
Pieces
Persons
Person

More quotes by Barbara Kingsolver

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Sometimes the strength of motherhood is greater than natural laws.
Barbara Kingsolver
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He needs to go rub his soul against life.
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Listen. To live is to be marked. To live is to change, to acquire the words of a story, and that is the only celebration we mortals really know. In perfect stillness, frankly, I've only found sorrow.
Barbara Kingsolver
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Forgive me, O Heavenly Father, according to the multitude of Thy mercies. I have lusted in my heart to break a man's skull and scatter the stench of his brains across several people's back yards.
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It seems very safe to me to be surrounded by green growing things and water.
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You could love your crazy people, even admire them, instead of resenting that they're not self-sufficient.
Barbara Kingsolver
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He warned Mother not to flout God's Will by expecting too much of us. Sending a girl to college is like pouring water in your shoes,' he still loves to say, as often as possible. 'It's hard to say which is worse, seeing it run out and waste the water, or seeing it hold in and wreck the shoes.
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.
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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.
Barbara Kingsolver
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For scientists, reality is not optional.
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organization is the religion of the single parent.
Barbara Kingsolver
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You know reviewers, they are the wind in their own sails.
Barbara Kingsolver
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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.
Barbara Kingsolver
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I considered her my ally, because, like me, she was imperfect.
Barbara Kingsolver
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As long as I kept moving, my grief streamed out behind me like a swimmer's long hair in water. I knew the weight was there but it didn't touch me. Only when I stopped did the slick, dark stuff of it come floating around my face, catching my arms and throat till I began to drown. So I just didn't stop.
Barbara Kingsolver
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It's very important to distinguish between innocence and naivete. The innocent do not deserve to be the victims of violence. But only the naive refuse to think about the origins of violence and to pursue the possibility that the genesis of that hatred could be addressed.
Barbara Kingsolver
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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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Libraries are the one American institution you shouldn't rip off.
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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... Urban friends ask me how I can stand living here, 'so far from everything?' When I hear this question over the phone, I'm usually looking out the window at a forest, a running creek, and a vegetable garden, thinking: Define everything.
Barbara Kingsolver