Barbara Kingsolver is a noted American writer. She attended DePauw University and then the University of Arizona, studying biology at both, before embarking on a career as a freelance writer. After a while, she started to work on becoming a novelist and eventually she found success when her first novel ‘The Bean Trees’, published in 1988. Kingsolver was born in 1955 in Maryland but when she was still only seven year old her family went to Congo and her experiences in the country was the inspiration behind her most famous novel ‘The Poisonwood Bible’. She has also written a widely read non-fiction book titled ‘Animal, Vegetable, Miracle’ that described the ways in which her family tried to eat locally. Her work draws heavily from themes such as social justice and human interaction, as well as biodiversity. A large percentage of her books have been on the New York Times Bestsellers List and it is no wonder that she is considered one of America’s top writers. Here are some of the famous quotes from Barbara Kingsolver, which will surely appeal to a curious mind.
The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof.
Listen. To live is to be marked. To live is to change, to acquire the words of a story, and that is the only celebration we mortals really know. In perfect stillness, frankly, I've only found sorrow.
Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It's the one and only thing you have to offer.
A mother's body remembers her babies-the folds of soft flesh, the softly furred scalp against her nose. Each child has it's own entreaties to body and soul.
No other continent has endured such an unspeakably bizarre combination of foreign thievery and foreign goodwill.
Barbara Kingsolver
Silence 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.
I lost a child," she said, meeting Lusa's eyes directly. "I thought I wouldn't live through it. But you do. You learn to love the place somebody leaves behind for you.
The 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.
Last time I talked to her she didn't sound like herself. She's depressed. It's awful what happens when people run out of money. They start thinking they're
no good.
I've about decided that's the main thing that separates happy people from the other people: the feeling that you're a practical item, with a use, like a sweater or a socket wrench.
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.
Illusions mistaken for truth are the pavement under our feet. They are what we call civilization.
Barbara Kingsolver
...nothing momentous comes in this world unless it comes on the shoulders of kindness.
Barbara Kingsolver
The conspicuous consumption of limited resources has yet to be accepted widely as a spiritual error, or even bad manners
Barbara Kingsolver
No matter what kind of night you're having, morning always wins.
Barbara Kingsolver
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.
You can curse the dead or pray for them, but don't expect them to do a thing for you. They're far too interested in watching us, to see what in heaven's name we will do next.
The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. The most you can do is live inside that hope, running down its hallways, touching the walls on both sides.
What we lose in our great human exodus from the land is a rooted sense, as deep and intangible as religious faith, of why we need to hold on to the wild and beautiful places that once surrounded us.
How 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 Kingsolver
If you ask me, when something extraordinary shows up in your life in the middle of the night, you give it a name and make it the best home you can.
