Quote

I know I have to write about the things that keep me awake at night.

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
Awake
Write
Keep
Night
Writing
Things

More quotes by Barbara Kingsolver

Image
Do you think its possible to live without wanting to put your name on your paintings? To belong to a group so securely you don't need to rise above it?
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
I know I'm a rare person, a trained scientist who writes fiction, because so few contemporary novelists engage with science.
Barbara Kingsolver
Image
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
Image
restraint equals indulgence
Barbara Kingsolver
Image
From the fallen tree everybody makes firewood.
Barbara Kingsolver
Image
The march of human progress seemed mainly a matter of getting over that initial shock of being here.
Barbara Kingsolver
Image
Your own family resemblances are a frustrating code, most easily read by those who know you least.
Barbara Kingsolver
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Memories do not always soften with time some grow edges like knives.
Barbara Kingsolver
Image
When you're given a brilliant child you polish her and let her shine. Pigs in Heaven
Barbara Kingsolver
Image
How pointless life could be, what a foolish business of inventing things to love, just so you could dread losing them.
Barbara Kingsolver
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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.
Barbara Kingsolver
Image
A good title holds magic, some cognitive dissonance, a little grit between the teeth, but above all it is the jumping-off place into wonder.
Barbara Kingsolver
Image
I know how people are, with their habits of mind. Most will sail through from cradle to grave with a conscience clean as snow...I know people. Most have no earthly notion of the price of a snow-white conscience.
Barbara Kingsolver
Image
The changes we dread most may contain our salvation.
Barbara Kingsolver