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(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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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
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Hunger of the body is altogether different from the shallow, daily hunger of the belly. Those who have known this kind of hunger cannot entirely love, ever again, those who have not.
Barbara Kingsolver
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restraint equals indulgence
Barbara Kingsolver
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We're animals. We're born like every other mammal and we live our whole lives around disguised animal thoughts.
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Of the two hundred bones in the human body, more than a quarter are in the foot. It is a more complicated instrument than an automobile transmission, and it is treated with far less consideration.
Barbara Kingsolver
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Tomorrow these villagers would carry their secret icons into the church without any priest and light the candles themselves, moving together in single-minded grace. Like the school of the fish, so driven to righteousness they could flout the law, declare the safety of their souls, then go home and destroy the evidence.
Barbara Kingsolver
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Anybody can get worked up, if they have the intention. It's peacefulness that is hard to come by on purpose.
Barbara Kingsolver
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If I had to give up my life for anything, it would have to have the resilience of hope, the elation of new literacy, the brilliant life of a field of flowers, the elementary kindness of bread. Nothing short of that. It would have to be something as sure as love.
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The march of human progress seemed mainly a matter of getting over that initial shock of being here.
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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
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Sometimes the strength of motherhood is greater than natural laws.
Barbara Kingsolver
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Nine-tenths of human law is about possession.
Barbara Kingsolver
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Hallie and I... were all there was. The image in the mirror that proves you are still here. We had exactly one sister apiece. We grew up knowing the simple arithmetic of scarcity: A sister is more precious than an eye.
Barbara Kingsolver
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God, why does a mortal man have children? It is senseless to love anything this much.
Barbara Kingsolver
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It's surprising how much memory is built around things unnoticed at the time.
Barbara Kingsolver
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Quit smoking in the hope of growing old. It takes a long time to write. People go to books for wisdom and older authors tend to have more of it.
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.
Barbara Kingsolver
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A woman without a man -- a condition of 'manlessness' -- is defined as alone. But a single mother is less alone than the average housewife.
Barbara Kingsolver
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Libraries are the one American institution you shouldn't rip off.
Barbara Kingsolver
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I can count all the ways in which being a mother has enriched my understanding of the world, of character, my sense of the future and my attachment to it. I can't imagine what kind of writer I'd be if I didn't have my kids.
Barbara Kingsolver