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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.

Barbara Kingsolver

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Barbara Kingsolver
Age: 69
Born: 1955
Born: April 8
Essayist
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Annapolis
Maryland
People
Mercy
Multitudes
Across
Yards
Lusted
Break
Brains
Stench
Brain
Heavenly
Mercies
Father
Forgive
Scatter
Back
Several
Skull
Heart
Forgiving
Skulls
Men
According
Multitude

More quotes by 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.
Barbara Kingsolver
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Recall that whatever lofty things you might accomplish today, you will do them only because you first ate something that grew out of the dirt.
Barbara Kingsolver
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Humans can be fairly ridiculous animals.
Barbara Kingsolver
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Sleeping alone seemed unnatural to me, and pitiful, something done in hospitals or when you're contagious.
Barbara Kingsolver
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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
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I've never gotten over high school, to the extent that I'm still a little surprised that my friends want to hang out with me.
Barbara Kingsolver
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Value is not made of money, but a tender balance of expectation and longing.
Barbara Kingsolver
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If someone does learn about the world from reading a novel of mine, that makes me very happy. It's probably not what brings me into the novel in the first place - I usually am pulled in by some big question about the world and human nature that I'm not going to resolve in the course of the novel. But I'm very devoted to getting my facts straight.
Barbara Kingsolver
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Most of the girls my age, or even younger, have babies. They appear way too young to be married, till you look in their eyes. Then you'll see it. Their eyes look happy and sad at the same time, but unexcited by anything, shifting easily off to the side as if they've already seen most of what there is. Married eyes.
Barbara Kingsolver
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Mother could go for one year without food, but not one day without her lip sticks.
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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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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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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Be still, and the world is bound to turn herself inside out to entertain you. Everywhere you look, joyful noise is clanging to drown out quiet desperation.
Barbara Kingsolver
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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
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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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The wrong words are impossible when there are no words.
Barbara Kingsolver
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The arrogance of the able-bodied is staggering. Yes, maybe we'd like to be able to get places quickly, and carry things in both hands but only because we have to keep up with the rest of you ... We would rather be just like us, and have that be all right.
Barbara Kingsolver
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Fiction is a sort of inter-human magic, allowing you to travel into a scene and feel it tingle on your skin.
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