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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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Barbara Kingsolver
Age: 69
Born: 1955
Born: April 8
Essayist
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Annapolis
Maryland
Kind
Answer
Believe
Conversation
Like
Answers
World
Literature
Moving
Raising
Tell
Kinds
Doe
Inspiring
Writing
Questions

More quotes by Barbara Kingsolver

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There is no point treating a depressed person as though she were just feeling sad, saying, 'There now, hang on, you'll get over it.' Sadness is more or less like a head cold- with patience, it passes. Depression is like cancer.
Barbara Kingsolver
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What we end up calling history is a kind of knife, slicing down through time. A few people are hard enough to bend its edge. But most won't even stand close to the blade. I'm one of those. We don't bend anything.
Barbara Kingsolver
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Children can be your heartache. But that doesn't matter, you have to go on and have them . . . it works out.
Barbara Kingsolver
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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.
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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Misunderstanding is my cornerstone. It's everyone's, come to think of it. Illusions mistaken for truth are the pavement under our feet.
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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You see mother, you had no life of your own. They have no idea. One has only a life of one's own.
Barbara Kingsolver
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Let me claim that Africa and I kept company for a while and then parted ways as if we were both party to relations with a failed outcome. Or say I was afflicted with Africa like a bout of a rare disease from which I have not managed a full recovery.
Barbara Kingsolver
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My worst nightmare is being stuck somewhere with nothing to read.
Barbara Kingsolver
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I believe that the people who survive a cataclysm, rather than those who stand by and analyze it, are nearly always the more credible witnesses to their own history.
Barbara Kingsolver
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It is completely usual for me to get up in the morning, take a look around, and laugh out loud.
Barbara Kingsolver
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There is something in us that loves certain disasters and the fever of this moment and surrendering to that.
Barbara Kingsolver
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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.
Barbara Kingsolver
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A good title holds magic, some cognitive dissonance, a little grit between the teeth, but above all it is the jumping-off place into wonder.
Barbara Kingsolver
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Eaters must understand, how we eat determines how the world is used.
Barbara Kingsolver
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He needs to go rub his soul against life.
Barbara Kingsolver
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Prayer had always struck me as more or less a glorified attempt at a business transaction.
Barbara Kingsolver
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I write every moment that is humanly possible. I write every day and every night. The only discipline I lack is the discipline is to quit.
Barbara Kingsolver
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But kids don't stay with you if you do it right. It's the one job where, the better you are, the more surely you won't be needed in the long run.
Barbara Kingsolver