Quote

(on asparagus) Europeans of the Renaissance swore by it as an aphrodisiac, and the church banned it from nunneries.

Barbara Kingsolver

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Barbara Kingsolver
Age: 69
Born: 1955
Born: April 8
Essayist
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Annapolis
Maryland
Church
Asparagus
Swore
Aphrodisiac
Europeans
Banned
Renaissance

More quotes by Barbara Kingsolver

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What keeps me awake at the wheel is the thrill of trying something completely new with each book. I’m not a risk-taker in life, generally speaking, but as a writer I definitely choose the fast car, the impossible rock face, the free fall.
Barbara Kingsolver
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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
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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.
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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Humans can be fairly ridiculous animals.
Barbara Kingsolver
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Ah, the mysterious croak. Here today, gone tomorrow. It's the best reason I can think of to throw open the blinds and risk belief. Right now, this minute, time to move out into the grief and glory. High tide.
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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For scientists, reality is not optional.
Barbara Kingsolver
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I have seen women looking at jewelry ads with a misty eye and one hand resting on the heart, and I only know what they're feeling because that's how I read the seed catalogs in January.
Barbara Kingsolver
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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
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I personally am inclined to approach [housework] the way governments treat dissent: ignore it until it revolts.
Barbara Kingsolver
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What keeps you going isn't some fine destination but just the road you're on, and the fact that you know how to drive.
Barbara Kingsolver
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If we can't, as artists, improve on real life, we should put down our pencils and go bake bread.
Barbara Kingsolver
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In the day-to-day, farm work is stress relief for me. At the end of the day, I love having this other career - my anti-job - that keeps me in shape and gives me control over a vegetal domain.
Barbara Kingsolver
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Our childhood had passed over into history overnight. The transition was unnoticed by anyone but ourselves.
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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I can think of no honorable answer. Why must some of us deliberate between brands of toothpaste, while others deliberate between damp dirt and bone dust to quiet the fire of an empty stomach lining? There is nothing about the United States I can really explain to this child of another world.
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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Memories do not always soften with time some grow edges like knives.
Barbara Kingsolver
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I don't bring expectations to any of my books. I don't tell people what to do. I want to invite them in.
Barbara Kingsolver