Quote

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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Barbara Kingsolver
Age: 69
Born: 1955
Born: April 8
Essayist
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Annapolis
Maryland
Stills
Bounds
Still
Noise
Look
Patience
Clanging
Looks
Everywhere
Drown
World
Quiet
Desperation
Inside
Entertain
Turn
Joyful
Turns
Bound

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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.
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People read books to escape the uncertainties of life.
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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.
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It's frightening when things you love appear suddenly changed from what you have always known.
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One of the very first things I figured out about life...is that it's better to be a hopeful person than a cynical, grumpy one, because you have to live in the same world either way, and if you're hopeful, you have more fun.
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If you want sweet dreams, you've got to live a sweet life.
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The longer you live, the more likely you are to have something to say.
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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.
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There's always more to a story than a body can see from the fenceline.
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I considered her my ally, because, like me, she was imperfect.
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I’ve seen how you can’t learn anything when you’re trying to look like the smartest person in the room.
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A certain feeling comes from throwing your good life away, and it is one part rapture.
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I have my own sheep and I literally sheer the sheep and knot sweaters for friends and family from scratch.
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The writing has been on the wall for some years now, but we are a nation illiterate in the language of the wall. The writing just gets bigger. Something will eventually bring down the charming, infuriating naïveté of Americans that allows us our blithe consumption and cheerful ignorance of the secret ugliness that bring us whatever we want.
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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.
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When moral superiority combines with billowing ignorance, they fill up a hot-air balloon that's awfully hard not to poke.
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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.
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In the places that call me out, I know I'll recover my wordless childhood trust in the largeness of life and its willingness to take me in.
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I grew up aware of all the people I depended on and who depended on me.
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Bitter words normally evaporate with the moisture of breath, after a quarrel. In order to become permanent, they require transcribers, reporters, complicit black hearts.
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