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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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Barbara Kingsolver
Age: 69
Born: 1955
Born: April 8
Essayist
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Annapolis
Maryland
Long
Stay
Needed
Jobs
Running
Mother
Mama
Kids
Parenting
Better
Motherhood
Right
Surely

More quotes by Barbara Kingsolver

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There's always a part of your nation's history that you haven't been told that... has a powerful impact on how you yourself may behave and may believe.
Barbara Kingsolver
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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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It's the one thing we never quite get over: that we contain our own future.
Barbara Kingsolver
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Why is it that only girls stand on the sides of their feet? As if they're afraid to plant themselves?
Barbara Kingsolver
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I never think that anything I'm writing is bluntly political in any way. I'm not going for commentary.
Barbara Kingsolver
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A dog can't think that much about what he's doing, he just does what feels right.
Barbara Kingsolver
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The power is in the balance: we are our injuries, as much as we are our successes.
Barbara Kingsolver
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Let me claim that Africa and I kept company for a while and then parted ways as if we were both party to relations with a failed outcome. Or say I was afflicted with Africa like a bout of a rare disease from which I have not managed a full recovery.
Barbara Kingsolver
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When you're given a brilliant child you polish her and let her shine. Pigs in Heaven
Barbara Kingsolver
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Wherever I am, let me never forget to distinguish want from need
Barbara Kingsolver
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It's a great freedom to give up on love, and get on with everything else.
Barbara Kingsolver
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School is about two parts ABCs to fifty parts Where Do I Stand in the Great Pecking Order of Humankind.
Barbara Kingsolver
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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
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I struggle with confidence, every time. I’m never completely sure I can write another book. Maybe my scope is too grand, my questions too hard, surely readers won’t want to follow me here. A novel is like a cathedral, it knocks you down to size when you enter into it.
Barbara Kingsolver
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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.
Barbara Kingsolver
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In Kilanga, people knew nothing of things they might have had - a Frigidaire? a washer-dryer combination? Really, they'd sooner imagine a tree that could pull up its feet and go bake bread. It didn't occur to them to feel sorry for themselves.
Barbara Kingsolver
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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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... 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
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Maybe life doesn't get any better than this, or any worse, and what we get is just what we're willing to find: small wonders, where they grow.
Barbara Kingsolver
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There were two things about Mama. One is she always expected the best out of me. And the other is that then no matter what I did, whatever I came home with, she acted like it was the moon I had just hung up in the sky and plugged in all the stars. Like I was that good.
Barbara Kingsolver