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We're surrounded by mandates, and I believe that literature should be mandate-free. I feel very strongly about that.

Barbara Kingsolver

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Barbara Kingsolver
Age: 69
Born: 1955
Born: April 8
Essayist
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Annapolis
Maryland
Free
Feel
Feels
Believe
Mandate
Mandates
Surrounded
Strongly
Literature

More quotes by Barbara Kingsolver

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We agreed with him in principal - we were little scientists, born and bred. But children robbed of love will dwell on magic.
Barbara Kingsolver
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God doesn’t need to punish us. He just grants us a long enough life to punish ourselves.
Barbara Kingsolver
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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.
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 we can't, as artists, improve on real life, we should put down our pencils and go bake bread.
Barbara Kingsolver
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I don't look like who I am.
Barbara Kingsolver
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How strange to read of a place in a book, and then stand on it, listen to the birds sing, and spit on the cobbles if you want.
Barbara Kingsolver
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As long as I kept moving, my grief streamed out behind me like a swimmer's long hair in water. I knew the weight was there but it didn't touch me. Only when I stopped did the slick, dark stuff of it come floating around my face, catching my arms and throat till I began to drown. So I just didn't stop.
Barbara Kingsolver
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The last generation's worst fears became the next one's B-grade entertainment.
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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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.
Barbara Kingsolver
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...whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. And peace will be with you.
Barbara Kingsolver
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It's one thing to carry your life wherever you go. Another thing to always go looking for it somewhere else.
Barbara Kingsolver
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A first child is your own best foot forward, and how you do cheer those little feet as they strike out. You examine every turn of flesh for precocity, and crow it to the world. But the last one: the baby who trails her scent like a flag of surrender through your life when there will be no more coming after--oh, that' s love by a different name.
Barbara Kingsolver
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Last time I talked to her she didn't sound like herself. She's depressed. It's awful what happens when people run out of money. They start thinking they're no good.
Barbara Kingsolver
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Even feigning surprise, pretending it was unexpected and saying a ritual thanks, is surely wiser than just expecting everything so carelessly.
Barbara Kingsolver
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You force people to stop asking questions, and before you know it they have auctioned off the question mark, or sold it for scrap. No boldness. No good ideas for fixing what's broken in the land. Because if you happen to mention it's broken, you are automatically disqualified.
Barbara Kingsolver
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In Kilanga, people knew nothing of things they might have had - a Frigidaire? a washer-dryer combination? Really, they'd sooner imagine a tree that could pull up its feet and go bake bread. It didn't occur to them to feel sorry for themselves.
Barbara Kingsolver
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Literature sucks you into another psyche. So the creation of empathy necessarily influences how you'll behave to other people.
Barbara Kingsolver
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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