Why does a person even get up in the morning? You have breakfast, you floss your teeth so you'll have healthy gums in your old age, and then you get in your car and drive down I-10 and die. Life is so stupid I can't stand it.
Barbara KingsolverMy 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 KingsolverSmall change, small wonders - these are the currency of my endurance and ultimately of my life.
Barbara KingsolverThe power is in the balance: we are our injuries, as much as we are our successes.
Barbara KingsolverHe 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 KingsolverDon't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say.
Barbara KingsolverSilence has many advantages. When you do not speak, other people presume you to be deaf or feeble-minded and promptly make a show of their own limitations.
Barbara KingsolverBut kids don't stay with you if you do it right. It's the one job where, the better you are, the more surely you won't be needed in the long run.
Barbara KingsolverIt occurs to her that there is one thing about people you can never understand well enough: how entirely inside themselves they are.
Barbara KingsolverA dog can't think that much about what he's doing, he just does what feels right.
Barbara KingsolverYour dreams, what you hope for and all that, it's not separate from your life. It grows right up out of it.
Barbara KingsolverYou 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 KingsolverThere 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 Kingsolverthere 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 KingsolverMaybe he's been in Africa so long he has forgotten that we Christians have our own system of marriage, and it is called Monotony.
Barbara KingsolverFood is the rare moral arena in which the ethical choice is generally the one more likely to make you groan with pleasure.
Barbara KingsolverGod doesn’t need to punish us. He just grants us a long enough life to punish ourselves.
Barbara KingsolverGrowing food was the first activity that gave us enough prosperity to stay in one place, form complex social groups, tell our stories, and build our cities.
Barbara KingsolverIf 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 KingsolverOn the day I swore to uphold the Hippocratic oath, the small hairs on the back of my neck stood up as I waited for lightning to strike. Who was I, vowing calmly among all these necktied young men to steal life out of nature's jaws, every old time we got half a chance and a paycheck?... I could not accept the contract: that every child born human upon this earth comes with a guarantee of perfect health and old age clutched in its small fist.
Barbara KingsolverPrayer had always struck me as more or less a glorified attempt at a business transaction.
Barbara KingsolverMost people no longer believe that buying sneakers made in Asian sweatshops is a kindness to those child laborers. Farming is similar. In every country on earth, the most human scenario for farmers is likely to be feeding those who live nearby-if international markets would allow them to do it. Food transport has become a bizarre and profitable economic equation that's no longer really about feeding anyone ... If you care about farmers, let the potatoes stay home.
Barbara KingsolverThe death of something living is the price of our own survival, and we pay it again and again. We have no choice. It is the one solemn promise every life on earth is born and bound to keep.
Barbara KingsolverBut I've swallowed my pride before, that's for sure. I'm practically lined with my mistakes on the inside like a bad-wallpapered bathroom.
Barbara KingsolverPlanning complex, beautiful meals and investing one's heart and time in their preparation is the opposite of self-indulgence. Kitchen-based family gatherings are process-oriented, cooperative, and in the best of worlds, nourishing and soulful. A lot of calories get used up before anyone sits down to consume. But more importantly, a lot of talk happens first, news exchanged, secrets revealed across generations, paths cleared with a touch on the arm. I have given and received some of my life's most important hugs with those big oven-mitt potholders on both hands.
Barbara KingsolverWill you explain to me why people encourage delusional behaviour in children, and medicate it in adults?
Barbara KingsolverScientific illiteracy in our populations is leaving too many of us unprepared to discuss or understand much of the damage we are wreaking on our atmosphere, our habitat, and even the food that enters our mouths.
Barbara KingsolverYou see mother, you had no life of your own. They have no idea. One has only a life of one's own.
Barbara KingsolverWatching Italians eat (especially men, I have to say) is a form of tourism the books don't tell you about. They close their eyes, raise their eyebrows into accent marks, and make sounds of acute appreciation. It's fairly sexy. Of course I don't know how these men behave at home, if they help with the cooking or are vain and boorish and mistreat their wives. I realized Mediterranean cultures have their issues. Fine, don't burst my bubble. I didn’t want to marry these guys, I just wanted to watch. (p. 247)
Barbara KingsolverOur holiday food splurge was a small crate of tangerines, which we found ridiculously thrilling after an eight-month abstinence from citrus.... Lily hugged each one to her chest before undressing it as gently as a doll. Watching her do that as she sat cross-legged on the floor one morning in pink pajamas, with bliss lighting her cheeks, I thought: Lucky is the world, to receive this grateful child. Value is not made of money, but a tender balance of expectation and longing.
Barbara KingsolverLiterature sucks you into another psyche. So the creation of empathy necessarily influences how you'll behave to other people.
Barbara KingsolverHow is it right to slip free of an old skin and walk away from the scene of the crime? We came, we saw, we took away and we left behind, we must be allowed our anguish and our regrets.
Barbara KingsolverTerms 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 KingsolverWhat a writer can do, what a fiction writer or a poet or an essay writer can do is re-engage people with their own humanity.
Barbara KingsolverBut Anatole said suddenly, 'Don't expect God's protection in places beyond God's dominion. It will only make you feel punished. I'm warning you. When things go bad, you will blame yourself.' 'What are you telling me?' 'I am telling you what I'm telling you. Don't try to make life a mathematics problem with yourself in the center and everything coming out equal. When you are good, bad things can still happen. And if you are bad, you can still be lucky.
Barbara KingsolverWhat keeps you going isn't some fine destination but just the road you're on, and the fact that you know how to drive. You keep your eyes open, you see this damned-to-hell world you got born into, and you ask yourself, 'What life can I live that will let me breathe in & out and love somebody or something and not run off screaming into the woods?
Barbara Kingsolver