Quote

The substance of grief is not imaginary. It's as real as rope or the absence of air, and like both those things, it can kill.

Barbara Kingsolver

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Barbara Kingsolver
Age: 69
Born: 1955
Born: April 8
Essayist
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Annapolis
Maryland
Kill
Real
Things
Rope
Like
Imaginary
Substance
Absence
Grief
Air

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Our house is like an empty cigarette packet, lying around reminding you what's not in it.
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Like Daniel she enteres the lions' den, but lacking Daniel's pure and unblemished soul, Ada is spiced with the flavors of vice that make for a tasty meal. Pure and unblemished souls must taste very bland, with an aftertaste of bitterness.
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My father wears his faith like the bronze breastplate of God's footsoldiers while our mother's is more like a good cloth coat with a secondhand fit.
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It's the one thing we never quite get over: that we contain our own future.
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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.
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It's what you do that makes your soul.
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restraint equals indulgence
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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.
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My worst nightmare is being stuck somewhere with nothing to read.
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It's very important to distinguish between innocence and naivete. The innocent do not deserve to be the victims of violence. But only the naive refuse to think about the origins of violence and to pursue the possibility that the genesis of that hatred could be addressed.
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Empathy is really the opposite of spiritual meanness. It's the capacity to understand that every war is both won and lost. And that someone else's pain is as meaningful as your own.
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It's a great freedom to give up on love, and get on with everything else.
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Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you figure out what you have to say.
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The wrong words are impossible when there are no words.
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Perhaps growing up meant we put our knives away and feigned ignorance of the damage.
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School is about two parts ABCs to fifty parts Where Do I Stand in the Great Pecking Order of Humankind.
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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.
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Culture is a slingshot moved by the force of its past
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He was getting that look he gets, oh boy, like Here comes Moses tromping down off of Mount Syanide with ten fresh ways to wreck your life.
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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