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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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Barbara Kingsolver
Age: 69
Born: 1955
Born: April 8
Essayist
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Annapolis
Maryland
Sides
Girl
Feminist
Plant
Girls
Afraid
Feet
Stand

More quotes by 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.
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Even feigning surprise, pretending it was unexpected and saying a ritual thanks, is surely wiser than just expecting everything so carelessly.
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Our childhood had passed over into history overnight. The transition was unnoticed by anyone but ourselves.
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In a world as wrong as this one, all we can do is make things as right as we can.
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People ask without wanting to know.
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Perhaps growing up meant we put our knives away and feigned ignorance of the damage.
Barbara Kingsolver
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It's a funny thing: people often ask how I discipline myself to write. I can't begin to understand the question. For me, the discipline is turning off the computer and leaving my desk to do something else.
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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Every minute with a child takes seven minutes off your life.
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Life proceeds, it enrages. The untouched ones spend their luck without a thought, believing they deserve it.
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Sometimes the strength of motherhood is greater than natural laws.
Barbara Kingsolver
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It's what you do that makes your soul.
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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.
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Being a novelist and being a mother have exactly coincided in my life: the call from my agent saying that I had a contract for my first novel - that was on my answering phone message when I got back from the hospital with my first child.
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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
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Literature is one of the few kinds of writing in the world that does not tell you what to buy, want, see, be, or believe. It's more like conversation, raising new questions and inspiring you to answer them for yourself.
Barbara Kingsolver
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The friend who holds your hand and says the wrong thing is made of dearer stuff than the one who stays away.
Barbara Kingsolver
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Oh, that river of wishes, the slippery crocodile dream of it, how it might have carried my body down through all the glittering sand bars to the sea.
Barbara Kingsolver
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Your own family resemblances are a frustrating code, most easily read by those who know you least.
Barbara Kingsolver
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I think the most interesting parts of human experience might be the sparks that come from that sort of chipping flint of cultures rubbing against each other.
Barbara Kingsolver