With all due respect for the wondrous ways people have invented to amuse themselves and one another on paved surfaces, I find that this exodus from the land makes me unspeakably sad. I think of the children who will never know, intuitively, that a flower is a plant's way of making love, or what silence sounds like, or that trees breathe out what we breathe in.
Barbara KingsolverCorn syrup and added fats have been outed as major ingredients in fast food, but they hide out in packaged foods too, even presumed-innocent ones like crackers.
Barbara KingsolverPlot comes first. The plot is the archictecture of your novel. You wouldn't build a house without a plan. If I wrote without a plot, it would just be a pile of bricks. Characters are your servants. They must serve your plot.
Barbara KingsolverThe friend who holds your hand and says the wrong thing is made of dearer stuff than the one who stays away.
Barbara KingsolverDonโt try to make life a mathematics problem with yourself in the center and everything coming out equal. When youโre good, bad things can still happen. And if youโre bad, you can still be lucky.
Barbara KingsolverMany of us who aren't farmers or gardeners still have some element of farm nostalgia in our family past, real or imagined: a secret longing for some connection to a life where a rooster crows in the yard.
Barbara KingsolverThere's a graveyard in northern France where all the dead boys from D-Day are buried. The white crosses reach from one horizon to the other. I remember looking it over and thinking it was a forest of graves. But the rows were like this, dizzying, diagonal, perfectly straight, so after all it wasn't a forest but an orchard of graves. Nothing to do with nature, unless you count human nature.
Barbara Kingsolver