Barbara Kingsolver: Trending quotes (page 5)

“Mr. Shepherd, ye cannot stop a bad thought from coming into your head. But ye need not pull up a chair and bide it sit down." - Mrs. Brown”

“We came from Bethlehem, Georgia bearing Betty Crocker cake mixes into the jungle.”

“Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say.”

“you can't really know the person standing before you, because always there is some missing piece”

“This Forest eats itself and lives forever.”

“One of the very first things I figured out about life… is that it's better to be a hopeful person than a cynical, grumpy one, because you have to live in the same world either way, and if you're hopeful, you have more fun.”

“Friends, there is nothing like your own family to make you appreciate strangers!”

“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.”

“Maybe he's been in Africa so long he has forgotten that we Christians have our own system of marriage, and it is called Monotony.”

“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.”

“Will you explain to me why people encourage delusional behaviour in children, and medicate it in adults?”

“The arrogance of the able-bodied is staggering. Yes, maybe we'd like to be able to get places quickly, and carry things in both hands, but only because we have to keep up with the rest of you. We would rather be just like, and have that be all right.”

“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.”

“But children robbed of love will dwell on magic.”

“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.”

“When you're given a brilliant child you polish her and let her shine.
Pigs in Heaven”

“Be careful what you give children, for sooner or later you are sure to get it back.”

“You see mother, you had no life of your own. They have no idea. One has only a life of one's own.”

“I learned to write by reading the kind of books I wished I'd written.”