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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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Barbara Kingsolver
Age: 69
Born: 1955
Born: April 8
Essayist
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Annapolis
Maryland
History
Witnesses
Believe
Analyze
Always
Credible
People
Nearly
Witness
Survive
Stand
Rather
Cataclysm

More quotes by Barbara Kingsolver

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there are people who read my work and accuse me of being political! As far as I'm concerned that's like accusing a dog of having a bark!
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The arrogance of the able-bodied is staggering. Yes, maybe we'd like to be able to get places quickly, and carry things in both hands but only because we have to keep up with the rest of you ... We would rather be just like us, and have that be all right.
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If you're standing in the manure pile, it's somebody's job to mention the stink.
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There's always more to a story than a body can see from the fenceline.
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I can count all the ways in which being a mother has enriched my understanding of the world, of character, my sense of the future and my attachment to it. I can't imagine what kind of writer I'd be if I didn't have my kids.
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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.
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It seems very safe to me to be surrounded by green growing things and water.
Barbara Kingsolver
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I considered her my ally, because, like me, she was imperfect.
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The way I see it, a person isn't nothing more than a scarecrow... The only difference between one that stands up good and one that blows over is what kind of a stick they're stuck up there on.
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From the fallen tree everybody makes firewood.
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Many of us who aren't farmers or gardeners still have some element of farm nostalgia in our family past, real or imagined: a secret longing for some connection to a life where a rooster crows in the yard.
Barbara Kingsolver
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Why does a person even get up in the morning? You have breakfast, you floss your teeth so you'll have healthy gums in your old age, and then you get in your car and drive down I-10 and die. Life is so stupid I can't stand it.
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Most of the girls my age, or even younger, have babies. They appear way too young to be married, till you look in their eyes. Then you'll see it. Their eyes look happy and sad at the same time, but unexcited by anything, shifting easily off to the side as if they've already seen most of what there is. Married eyes.
Barbara Kingsolver
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You could love your crazy people, even admire them, instead of resenting that they're not self-sufficient.
Barbara Kingsolver
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I know I'm a rare person, a trained scientist who writes fiction, because so few contemporary novelists engage with science.
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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Root out all the to be verbs in your prose and bludgeon them until dead. No It was or they are or I am. Don't let it be, make it happen.
Barbara Kingsolver
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The most important thing about a person is always the thing you don't know.
Barbara Kingsolver
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I prefer to remain anomalous.
Barbara Kingsolver
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Nonfiction requires enormous discipline. You construct the terms of your story, and then you stick to them.
Barbara Kingsolver