There's always a part of your nation's history that you haven't been told that... has a powerful impact on how you yourself may behave and may believe.


Barbara Kingsolver

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You don't want to trash what you've done; that's your history.
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Mama always said barefoot and pregnant was not my style. She knew.
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Sometimes the strength of motherhood is greater than natural laws.
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The truth needs so little rehearsal.
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As a biologist, I can't think of myself as anything but an animal among animals and plant.
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I can count all the ways in which being a mother has enriched my understanding of the world, of char...
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Pain reaches the heart with electrical speed, but truth moves to the heart as slowly as a glacier.
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I think the most interesting parts of human experience might be the sparks that come from that sort ...
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Southern Appalachians have been ridiculed since the country began. In fiction, they're usually d...
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Like kids who only ever get socks for Christmas, but still believe with all their hearts in Santa.
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I used to think religion was just more of the same thing. Dump responsibility on the big guy. Now I ...
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Hallie and I... were all there was. The image in the mirror that proves you are still here. We had e...
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That would be Axelroot all over, to turn up with an extra wife or two claiming that's how they do it...
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The last generations's worst fears become the next one's B-grade entertainment.
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My morning begins with trying not to get up before the sun rises. But when I do, it's because my...
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A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory
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Illusions mistaken for truth are the pavement under our feet. They are what we call civilization.
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When something extraordinary shows up in your life in the middle of the night, you give it a name an...
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I love developing children as characters. Children rarely have important roles in literary fiction -...
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The friend who holds your hand and says the wrong thing is made of dearer stuff than the one who sta...
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But newspapers have a duty to truth,' Van said.
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In a world as wrong as this one, all we can do is make things as right as we can.
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You always need that spark of imagination. Sometimes I'm midway through a book before it happens...
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It's frightening when things you love appear suddenly changed from what you have always known.
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No other continent has endured such an unspeakably bizarre combination of foreign thievery and forei...
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We're animals. We're born like every other mammal and we live our whole lives around disguis...
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God doesn’t need to punish us. He just grants us a long enough life to punish ourselves.
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Everything you're sure is right can be wrong in another place.
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The important thing isn't the house. It's the ability to make it. You carry that in your brains and ...
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Close the door. Write with _no one_ looking over your shoulder. Don't try to figure out what other p...
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A first child is your own best foot forward, and how you do cheer those little feet as they strike o...
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He spoke for an hour on the nonviolent road to independence. The crowd loved it so much they rioted ...
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Patriotism threatens free speech with death. In other words, the American flag stands for intimidati...
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Libraries are the one American institution you shouldn't rip off.
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If men only knew, modesty makes women fall in love faster than all the cock-a-doodling in the world.
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No matter what kind of night you're having, morning always wins.
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Last time I talked to her she didn't sound like herself. She's depressed. It's awful what happens wh...
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God, why does a mortal man have children? It is senseless to love anything this much.
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Soon the maroon-throated howls would echo back from the other trees, father down the beach, until th...
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When people are frightened about going hungry and paying their mortgages, a scarcity model begins to...
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WOMEN ON THEIR OWN RUN in Alice’s family. This dawns on her with the unkindness of a heart attack ...
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Then again, do you have to be told every single thing about the world before you know it?
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The backs of his hands remind him of paper burning in the fireplace, the moment the taut membrane go...
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She told him television was a bad influence. Probably she was right. Like those white birds he's bee...
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Let's go take a walk down to the blue hole. You need to look at some water.
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She climbs down and pours half an inch of Jim Beam into a Bengals mug that came free with a tank of ...
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They rock against each other, holding on, and the birds in the forest raise their voices to drown ou...
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I've just fallen on some bad luck and landed jelly side down.
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The clock gulps softly, eating second whole while she waits...
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You talk about her as if she is the Notre Dame Cathedral!" "She is. And the Statue of Liberty and Ab...
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I was so depressed I stopped using hair spray for three weeks.
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She married him two years ago for love, or so she thought, and he's a good enough man but a devotee ...
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I’m always looking at the dialectic between the truth we believe exists outside ourselves and the ...
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Alice hands Annawake a handkerchief. Young people never carry them, she's noticed. They haven't yet ...
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She understands all at once, with a small shock, exactly what it is she always needed to tell Harlan...
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The obstinate practicality of old women pierces and fortifies these families like the steel rods bur...
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A woman knows she can walk away from a pot to tend something else and the pot will go on boiling; if...
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It's monstrous, what one person will do to another.
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She has changed in this way that motherhood changes you, so that you forget you ever had time for sm...
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You could love your crazy people, even admire them, instead of resenting that they're not self-suffi...
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He lifts her breasts, which fit perfectly into his hands, though he knows this is no promise that he...
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Be sweet and carry a sharp knife, was her motto.
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He was my father. I own half his genes, and all of his history. Believe this: the mistakes are part ...
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I know what it is: it's a green mamba snake away up in the tree. You don't have to be afraid of them...
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What a rich wisdom it would be, and how much more bountiful a harvest, to gain pleasure not from ach...
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What there is in this world, I think, is a tendency for human errors to level themselves like water ...
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Finally Cub said, "They don't call it global weirding."
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restraint equals indulgence
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It is harrowing for me to try to teach 20-year-old students, who earnestly want to improve their wri...
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It kills you to see them grow up. But I guess it would kill you quicker if they didn't.
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Why does a person even get up in the morning? You have breakfast, you floss your teeth so you'll hav...
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In my own worst seasons I've come back from the colorless world of despair by forcing myself to look...
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I was trained in classical piano, but it kind of dawned on me that classical pianists compete for si...
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Mistakes wreck your life. But they make what you have. It's kind of all one. You know what Hester to...
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There can be no greater spiritual accomplishment than to come through brutal trials and then look ba...
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If you can't live by the laws the LORD God made for the world, they'll go into effect regardless.
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always tried to be positive with her, although I’d learned
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A disappointed-looking Jesus eyed her from the wall...Look, look, her steps called out, here is a re...
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If people really gave it full consideration, I mean, like if you could return a baby after thirty da...
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She made it plain that her fondest wish was to have a grandbaby. Whenever fat Irene would pick up th...
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Do you know, I spent the first half of my life avoiding motherhood and tires, and now I’m counting...
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When I was Turtle’s age I had never had anyone or anything important taken from me. I still hadn�...
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We do have some strong traditions of community in the United States, but it’s interesting to me th...
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That means you're my kid," I explained, "and I'm your mother, and nobody can say it isn't so.
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I have been afraid of putting air in a tire ever since I saw a tractor tire blow up and throw Newt H...
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So one time when I was working in this motel one of the toilets leaked and I had to replace the flap...
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It was hard to feel the remotest sympathy for any of the different fools she'd been. As opposed to t...
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Whatever you want the most, it’s going to be the worst thing for you.
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Mi'ija, in a world as wrong as this one, all we can do is to make things as right as we can.
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You think you're the foreigner here, and I'm the American, and I just look the other way while the P...
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I’ve been thinking about that. About how your kids aren’t really yours, they’re just these peo...
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The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. The most you can do is li...
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You're asking yourself, Can I give this child the best possible upbringing and keep her out of harm'...
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That was when we smelled the rain. It was so strong it seemed like more than just a smell. When we s...
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Tortolita, let me tell you a story,” Estevan said. “This is a South American, wild Indian story ...
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It's terrible to lose somebody, but it's also true that some people never have anybody to lose, and ...
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I had decided early on that if I couldn’t dress elegant, I’d dress memorable.
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Sadness is more or less like a head cold - with patience, it passes. Depression is like cancer.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER
A human being can be good or bad or right or wrong, maybe. But how can you say a person is illegal? ...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER
There were two things about Mama. One is she always expected the best out of me. And the other is th...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER
The flowers were beaten down, their bent-over heads bejeweled with diamond droplets like earring on ...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER
Listen. Slide the weight from your shoulders and move forward. You are afraid you might forget, but ...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER
The longer I think about a food industry organized around an animal that cannot reproduce itself wit...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER
If it crosses your mind that water running through hundreds of miles of open ditch in a desert will ...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER
Most of us are creatures so comforted by habit, it can take something on the order of religion to in...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER
Every time I write a new novel about something sombre and sobering and terrible I think, 'oh Lor...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER
I did it to win love, and to prove myself capable. Not to move mountains. In my opinions, mountains ...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER
Spring is made of solid, fourteen-karat gratitude, the reward for the long wait. Every religious tra...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER
Why is it that only girls stand on the sides of their feet? As if they're afraid to plant themselves...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER
You think you're no good, so you can't do good things. Jesus, Codi, how long are you going to keep l...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER
Awareness is everything. Hallie once pointed out to me that people worry a lot more about the eterni...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER
Memory runs along deep, fixed channels in the brain, like electricity along its conduits; only a cat...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER
What keeps you going isn't just some fine destination but the road you're on and the fact you know h...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER
Perhaps growing up meant we put our knives away and feigned ignorance of the damage.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER
There was a roaring in my ears and I lost track of what they were saying. I believe it was the physi...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER
You can’t replace people you love with other people…But you can trust that you’re not going to...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER
It's one thing to carry your life wherever you go. Another thing to always go looking for it somewhe...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER
Insomnia’s different,” I said. It was hard to explain this to people. “You know the light that...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER
Sometimes I still have American dreams. I mean literally. I see microwave ovens and exercise machine...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER
To people who think of themselves as God's houseguests, American enterprise must seem arrogant beyon...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER
I don't expect to see perfection before I die. Lord, if I did I would have stuck my head in the oven...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER
But children robbed of love will dwell on magic.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER
You're thinking of revolution as a great all-or-nothing. I think of it as one more morning in a mugg...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER
I thought: this is how life is, ridiculous beyond comprehension.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER
I've about decided that's the main thing that separates happy people from the other people: the feel...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER
The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do i...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER
At some point in my life I'd honestly hoped love would rescue me from the cold, drafty castle I live...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER
Your dreams, what you hope for and all that, it's not separate from your life. It grows right up out...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER
Emelina and I took each other in. All morning I'd felt the strange disjuncture that comes from recon...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER
A miscarriage is a natural and common event. All told, probably more women have lost a child from th...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER
What keeps you going isn't some fine destination but just the road you're on, and the fact that you ...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER
What I want is so simple I almost can't say it: elementary kindness.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER
She kept swimming out into life because she hadn't yet found a rock to stand on.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER
He warned Mother not to flout God's Will by expecting too much of us. "Sending a girl to college is ...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER
....mountains. They stand at every view, like a mother offering a blanket in which to wrap everyday ...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER
But I'll tell you a secret. When I want to take God at his word exactly I take a peep out the window...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER
Because I could not stop for death he kindly stopped for me, or paused at least to strike a glancing...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER
When you're given a brilliant child you polish her and let her shine.
Pigs in Heaven
BARBARA KINGSOLVER
As long as I kept moving, my grief streamed out behind me like a swimmer's long hair in water. I kne...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER
I don't bring expectations to any of my books. I don't tell people what to do. I want to inv...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER
Nonfiction requires enormous discipline. You construct the terms of your story, and then you stick t...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER
When I sit down to write, I consider myself an artist.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER
I know I'm a rare person, a trained scientist who writes fiction, because so few contemporary no...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER
Most every book I bring into the world is like birthing a baby; it's a lot of effort!
BARBARA KINGSOLVER
After 'The Poisonwood Bible' was published, several people believed that my parents were mis...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER
It's a funny thing: people often ask how I discipline myself to write. I can't begin to unde...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER
At home, growing up, we weren't really poor. We had everything we needed, we just didn't hav...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER
I suppose that is my central obsession. What we owe to society, what we owe to ourselves.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER
Being a novelist and being a mother have exactly coincided in my life: the call from my agent saying...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER