Quote

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

Barbara Kingsolver

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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

More quotes by Barbara Kingsolver

Image
I personally am inclined to approach [housework] the way governments treat dissent: ignore it until it revolts.
Barbara Kingsolver
Image
Humans can be fairly ridiculous animals.
Barbara Kingsolver
Image
The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for!
Barbara Kingsolver
Image
Sleeping alone seemed unnatural to me, and pitiful, something done in hospitals or when you're contagious.
Barbara Kingsolver
Image
A flower is a plant's way of making love.
Barbara Kingsolver
Image
I thought: this is how life is, ridiculous beyond comprehension.
Barbara Kingsolver
Image
If you want sweet dreams, you've got to live a sweet life.
Barbara Kingsolver
Image
If you're standing in the manure pile, it's somebody's job to mention the stink.
Barbara Kingsolver
Image
Libraries are the one American institution you shouldn't rip off.
Barbara Kingsolver
Image
Terms like that, 'Humane Society,' are devised with people like me in mind, who don't care to dwell on what happens to the innocent.
Barbara Kingsolver
Image
What you lose in blindness is the space around you, the place where you are, and without that you might not exist. You could be nowhere at all.
Barbara Kingsolver
Image
Like Daniel she enteres the lions' den, but lacking Daniel's pure and unblemished soul, Ada is spiced with the flavors of vice that make for a tasty meal. Pure and unblemished souls must taste very bland, with an aftertaste of bitterness.
Barbara Kingsolver
Image
Sugar, it's no parade but you'll get down the street one way or another, so you'd just as well throw your shoulders back and pick up the pace.
Barbara Kingsolver
Image
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
Image
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!
Barbara Kingsolver
Image
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
Image
A dog can't think that much about what he's doing, he just does what feels right.
Barbara Kingsolver
Image
When you're given a brilliant child you polish her and let her shine. Pigs in Heaven
Barbara Kingsolver
Image
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
Image
... Urban friends ask me how I can stand living here, 'so far from everything?' When I hear this question over the phone, I'm usually looking out the window at a forest, a running creek, and a vegetable garden, thinking: Define everything.
Barbara Kingsolver