Quote

God, why does a mortal man have children? It is senseless to love anything this much.

Barbara Kingsolver

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Barbara Kingsolver
Age: 69
Born: 1955
Born: April 8
Essayist
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Annapolis
Maryland
Mortal
Mortals
Doe
Anything
Children
Much
Men
Senseless
Love

More quotes by Barbara Kingsolver

Image
Stop a minute, right where you are. Relax your shoulders, shake your head and spine like a dog shaking off cold water. Tell that imperious voice in your head to be still.
Barbara Kingsolver
Image
Your own family resemblances are a frustrating code, most easily read by those who know you least.
Barbara Kingsolver
Image
I thought: this is how life is, ridiculous beyond comprehension.
Barbara Kingsolver
Image
restraint equals indulgence
Barbara Kingsolver
Image
I rarely think of poetry as something I make happen it is more accurate to say that it happens to me. Like a summer storm, a house afire, or the coincidence of both on the same day.
Barbara Kingsolver
Image
It's what you do that makes your soul.
Barbara Kingsolver
Image
Small change, small wonders - these are the currency of my endurance and ultimately of my life.
Barbara Kingsolver
Image
Arterial-plaque specials that save minutes now can cost years, later on.
Barbara Kingsolver
Image
Wherever I am, let me never forget to distinguish want from need
Barbara Kingsolver
Image
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
Image
There are some who'd hardly lift a finger for kindness, but they would haul up a load of rock to dump on some soul they think's been too lucky.
Barbara Kingsolver
Image
Food is the rare moral arena in which the ethical choice is generally the one more likely to make you groan with pleasure.
Barbara Kingsolver
Image
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
Image
I know I have to write about the things that keep me awake at night.
Barbara Kingsolver
Image
You could love your crazy people, even admire them, instead of resenting that they're not self-sufficient.
Barbara Kingsolver
Image
Good fiction creates empathy. A novel takes you somewhere and asks you to look through the eyes of another person, to live another life.
Barbara Kingsolver
Image
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
Image
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
Image
A choir of seedlings arching their necks out of rotted tree stumps, sucking life out of death. I am the forest's conscience, but remember, the forest eats itself and lives forever.
Barbara Kingsolver
Image
Like Daniel she enteres the lions' den, but lacking Daniel's pure and unblemished soul, Ada is spiced with the flavors of vice that make for a tasty meal. Pure and unblemished souls must taste very bland, with an aftertaste of bitterness.
Barbara Kingsolver