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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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Barbara Kingsolver
Age: 69
Born: 1955
Born: April 8
Essayist
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Annapolis
Maryland
Root
Prose
Roots
Dead
Happen
Happens
Make
Bludgeon
Verbs
More quotes by Barbara Kingsolver
Our house is like an empty cigarette packet, lying around reminding you what's not in it.
Barbara Kingsolver
Hunger of the body is altogether different from the shallow, daily hunger of the belly. Those who have known this kind of hunger cannot entirely love, ever again, those who have not.
Barbara Kingsolver
Maybe life doesn't get any better than this, or any worse, and what we get is just what we're willing to find: small wonders, where they grow.
Barbara Kingsolver
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
My morning begins with trying not to get up before the sun rises. But when I do, it's because my head is too full of words, and I just need to get to my desk and start dumping them into a file. I always wake with sentences pouring into my head.
Barbara Kingsolver
My worst nightmare is being stuck somewhere with nothing to read.
Barbara Kingsolver
Oh, that river of wishes, the slippery crocodile dream of it, how it might have carried my body down through all the glittering sand bars to the sea.
Barbara Kingsolver
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
I don't look like who I am.
Barbara Kingsolver
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
But children robbed of love will dwell on magic.
Barbara Kingsolver
It's what you do that makes your soul.
Barbara Kingsolver
People's dreams are made out of what they do all day. The same way a dog that runs after rabbits will dream of rabbits. It's what you do that makes your soul, not the other way around.
Barbara Kingsolver
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.
Barbara Kingsolver
The gods you do not pay are the ones that can curse you best.
Barbara Kingsolver
Culture is a slingshot moved by the force of its past
Barbara Kingsolver
If you're standing in the manure pile, it's somebody's job to mention the stink.
Barbara Kingsolver
Bitter words normally evaporate with the moisture of breath, after a quarrel. In order to become permanent, they require transcribers, reporters, complicit black hearts.
Barbara Kingsolver
The friend who holds your hand and says the wrong thing is made of dearer stuff than the one who stays away.
Barbara Kingsolver
Every minute with a child takes seven minutes off your life.
Barbara Kingsolver