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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
Strongly
Literature
Free
Feel
Feels
Believe
Mandate
Mandates
Surrounded

More quotes by Barbara Kingsolver

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Small change, small wonders - these are the currency of my endurance and ultimately of my life.
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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He needs to go rub his soul against life.
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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He warned Mother not to flout God's Will by expecting too much of us. Sending a girl to college is like pouring water in your shoes,' he still loves to say, as often as possible. 'It's hard to say which is worse, seeing it run out and waste the water, or seeing it hold in and wreck the shoes.
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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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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Perhaps growing up meant we put our knives away and feigned ignorance of the damage.
Barbara Kingsolver
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My father wears his faith like the bronze breastplate of God's footsoldiers while our mother's is more like a good cloth coat with a secondhand fit.
Barbara Kingsolver
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Plants do everything animals do, but slowly. They migrate, communicate, deceive, stalk their food and, with an ostentation of styles and perfumes to put the animal kingdom to shame, they make love. It's just that catching them in flagrante delicto might require time-lapse photography.
Barbara Kingsolver
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Loose lips sink ships.
Barbara Kingsolver
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It kills you to see them grow up. But I guess it would kill you quicker if they didn't.
Barbara Kingsolver
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What keeps me awake at the wheel is the thrill of trying something completely new with each book. I’m not a risk-taker in life, generally speaking, but as a writer I definitely choose the fast car, the impossible rock face, the free fall.
Barbara Kingsolver
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The standard approach has been to pump up the dosage of chemicals ... Twenty percent of these approved-for-use pesticides are listed by the EPA as carcinogenic in humans.
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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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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Quit smoking in the hope of growing old. It takes a long time to write. People go to books for wisdom and older authors tend to have more of it.
Barbara Kingsolver
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Memories do not always soften with time some grow edges like knives.
Barbara Kingsolver
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Americans who read and think are patriots of the first order. The kind who know enough to roll their eyes whenever anyone tries to claim sole custody of the flag and weild it as a blunt instrument. There are as many ways to love America as there are Americans, and our country needs us all.
Barbara Kingsolver
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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