Quote

Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, writers will go to stupefying lengths to get the infernal roar of words out of their skulls and onto paper.

Barbara Kingsolver

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Barbara Kingsolver
Age: 69
Born: 1955
Born: April 8
Essayist
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Annapolis
Maryland
Paper
Onto
Words
Gotta
Birds
Stupefying
Length
Infernal
Fish
Lengths
Fishes
Roar
Bird
Skulls
Writers
Swim

More quotes by 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
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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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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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Libraries are the one American institution you shouldn't rip off.
Barbara Kingsolver
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Our house is like an empty cigarette packet, lying around reminding you what's not in it.
Barbara Kingsolver
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You always need that spark of imagination. Sometimes I'm midway through a book before it happens. However, I don't wait for the muse to descend, I sit down every day and I work when I'm not delivering lambs on the farm.
Barbara Kingsolver
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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.
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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Good fiction creates empathy. A novel takes you somewhere and asks you to look through the eyes of another person, to live another life.
Barbara Kingsolver
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There are some who'd hardly lift a finger for kindness, but they would haul up a load of rock to dump on some soul they think's been too lucky.
Barbara Kingsolver
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We're animals. We're born like every other mammal and we live our whole lives around disguised animal thoughts.
Barbara Kingsolver
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I don't bring expectations to any of my books. I don't tell people what to do. I want to invite them in.
Barbara Kingsolver
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If you want sweet dreams, you've got to live a sweet life.
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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If you can't dress expensive, dress memorable.
Barbara Kingsolver
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I learned to produce whether I wanted to or not. It would be easy to say oh, I have writer's block, oh, I have to wait for my muse. I don't. Chain that muse to your desk and get the job done.
Barbara Kingsolver
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Finally, cooking is good citizenship. It's the only way to get serious about putting locally raised foods into your diet, which keeps farmlands healthy and grocery money in the neighborhood.
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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They all attended Hester's church, which Dellarobia viewed as a complicated pyramid scheme of moral debt and credit resting ultimately on the shoulders of the Lord, but rife with middle managers.
Barbara Kingsolver
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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.
Barbara Kingsolver