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Barbara Kingsolver Quotes
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Barbara Kingsolver is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, essayist, and poet. Her widely known works include The Poisonwood Bible, the tale of a missionary family in the Congo, and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, a nonfiction account of her family's attempts to eat locally. In 2023, she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for the novel Demon Copperhead. Her work often focuses on topics such as social justice, biodiversity, and the interaction between humans and their communities and environments.

Kingsolver has received numerous awards, including the Dayton Literary Peace Prize's Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award 2011 and the National Humanities Medal. After winning for The Lacuna in 2010 and Demon Copperhead in 2023, Kingsolver became the first author to win the Women's Prize for Fiction twice. Each of her books published since 1993 has been on the New York Times Best Seller list.Kingsolver was raised in rural Kentucky, lived briefly in the Congo in her early childhood, and currently lives in the Appalachia area of the United States. She earned degrees in biology, ecology, and evolutionary biology at DePauw University and the University of Arizona and worked as a freelance writer before she began writing novels. In 2000, Kingsolver established the Bellwether Prize to support "literature of social change".



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✵ 8. April 1955
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Barbara Kingsolver: 119 quotes0 likes

Barbara Kingsolver Quotes

“When moral superiority combines with billowing ignorance, they fill up a hot-air balloon that's awfully hard not to poke.”

Barbara Kingsolver

“I wonder that religion can live or die on the strength of a faint, stirring breeze. The scent trail shifts, causing the predator to miss the pounce. One god draws in the breath of life and rises; another god expires.”

Barbara Kingsolver The Poisonwood Bible

Source: The Poisonwood Bible

“I thought I wouldn't live through it. But you do. You learn to love the place somebody leaves behind for you.”

Barbara Kingsolver book Prodigal Summer

Source: Prodigal Summer

“Illusions mistaken for truth are the pavement under our feet. They are what we call civilization.”

Barbara Kingsolver The Poisonwood Bible

Source: The Poisonwood Bible

“Value is not made of money, but a tender balance of expectation and longing.”

Barbara Kingsolver book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life

Source: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life

“… nothing momentous comes in this world unless it comes on the shoulders of kindness.”

Barbara Kingsolver book The Lacuna

Source: The Lacuna

“Every life is different because you passed this way and touched history.”

Barbara Kingsolver The Poisonwood Bible

Source: The Poisonwood Bible

“For if there is any single thing that everyone hopes for most dearly, it must be this: that the youngest outlive the oldest.”

Barbara Kingsolver The Poisonwood Bible

Source: The Poisonwood Bible

“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.”

Barbara Kingsolver The Poisonwood Bible

Source: The Poisonwood Bible

“This is how moths speak to each other. They tell their love across the fields by scent. There is no mouth, the wrong words are impossible, either a mate is there or he is not, and if so the pair will find each other in the dark.”

Barbara Kingsolver book Prodigal Summer

Source: Prodigal Summer

“Poor Congo, barefoot bride of men who took her jewels and promised the Kingdom.”

Barbara Kingsolver The Poisonwood Bible

Source: The Poisonwood Bible

“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”

Barbara Kingsolver book The Lacuna

Source: The Lacuna

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

Barbara Kingsolver The Poisonwood Bible

Source: The Poisonwood Bible

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

Barbara Kingsolver book The Lacuna

Source: The Lacuna

“This Forest eats itself and lives forever.”

Barbara Kingsolver The Poisonwood Bible

Source: The Poisonwood Bible

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

Barbara Kingsolver The Poisonwood Bible

Source: The Poisonwood Bible

“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.”

Barbara Kingsolver The Poisonwood Bible

Source: The Poisonwood Bible

“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.”

Barbara Kingsolver The Poisonwood Bible

Source: The Poisonwood Bible

“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.”

Barbara Kingsolver The Poisonwood Bible

Source: The Poisonwood Bible

“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 The Poisonwood Bible

Source: The Poisonwood Bible

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

Barbara Kingsolver Animal Dreams

Source: Animal Dreams

“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.”

Barbara Kingsolver book Small Wonder

Source: Small Wonder

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

Barbara Kingsolver book High Tide in Tucson

Source: High Tide in Tucson

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

Barbara Kingsolver The Poisonwood Bible

Source: The Poisonwood Bible

“A breeze shook rain out of new leaves onto their hair, but in their pursuit of eternity they never noticed the chill.”

Barbara Kingsolver book Prodigal Summer

Source: Prodigal Summer

“Because I could not stop for death he kindly stopped for me, or paused at least to strike a glancing blow with his sky-blue mouth as he passed.”

Barbara Kingsolver The Poisonwood Bible

Source: The Poisonwood Bible

“If you can't dress expensive, dress memorable.”

Barbara Kingsolver

“Eyes can pierce a skull.”

Barbara Kingsolver book The Lacuna

The Lacuna

“It kills you to see them grow up. But I guess it would kill you quicker if they didn't.”

Barbara Kingsolver Animal Dreams

Emelina, Animal Dreams.
Animal Dreams (1990)

“I also thank Bill McKibben and his 350. org colleagues for the most important work in the world, and the most unending.”

Barbara Kingsolver book Flight Behavior

"Author's note", Flight Behavior, page 599 (ISBN 978-0-571-29081-9).
Flight Behavior (2012)

“Even the most recalcitrant climate scientists agree now, the place is heating up. pretty much every one of the lot. Unless some other outcome is written on the subject line of his paycheck. […] If you were here to get information, Tina, you would not be standing in my laboratory telling me what scientists think.”

Barbara Kingsolver book Flight Behavior

The entomologist Ovid Byron to the journalist Tina Ultner, Flight Behavior, page 505-506 (ISBN 978-0-571-29081-9).
Flight Behavior (2012)

“Libraries are the one American institution you shouldn't rip off.”

Barbara Kingsolver Animal Dreams

Hallie Noline, Animal Dreams.
Animal Dreams (1990)

“He was wounded. I suppose some sharp thing in me wanted to sting him, for making me need him now. After he'd once cut me to the edge of what a soul will bear. But that was senseless…. I looked at this grown-up Loyd and tried to make sense of him, seeing clearly that he was too sweet to survive around me. I would go to my grave expecting the weapon in the empty hand.”

Barbara Kingsolver Animal Dreams

Codi Noline, Animal Dreams.
Animal Dreams (1990)

“I have been afraid of putting air in a tire ever since I saw a tractor tire blow up and throw Newt Hardbine's father over the top of the Standard Oil sign. I'm not lying. He got stuck up there. About nineteen people congregated during the time it took for Norman Strick to walk up to the Courthouse and blow the whistle for the volunteer fire department. They eventually did come with the ladder and haul him down, and he wasn't dead but lost his hearing and in many other ways was never the same afterward. They said he overfilled the tire.”

Barbara Kingsolver The Bean Trees

The Bean Trees (1988).

“At some point in my life I'd honestly hoped love would rescue me from the cold, drafty castle I lived in. But at another point, much earlier I think, I'd quietly begun to hope for nothing at all in the way of love, so as not to be disappointed. It works. It gets to be a habit.”

Barbara Kingsolver Animal Dreams

Codi Noline, Animal Dreams.
Animal Dreams (1990)

“Every minute with a child takes seven minutes off your life.”

Barbara Kingsolver Animal Dreams

Animal Dreams.
Animal Dreams (1990)

“Cub retreated to the familiar grounds of remorse and insufficiency, the terms of his existence, ratified by marriage. He could construct defeat from any available material and live inside it, but for once Dellarobia didn't go there with him. she was going ahead.”

Barbara Kingsolver book Flight Behavior

Flight Behavior, page 576 (ISBN 978-0-571-29081-9).
Flight Behavior (2012)

“There is some kind of juice in our brains that makes us only care about what's in front of us right this minute. Even if we know something different will happen later and we should think about that too. […] If I could teach you one thing, Preston, that's it. Think about what's coming at you later on.”

Barbara Kingsolver book Flight Behavior

Dellarobia Turnbow speaking to her son, Flight Behavior, page 589 (ISBN 978-0-571-29081-9).
Flight Behavior (2012)

“The march of human progress seemed mainly a matter of getting over that initial shock of being here.”

Barbara Kingsolver Animal Dreams

Animal Dreams.
Animal Dreams (1990)

“A flock is nothing but the put-together of all your past choices.”

Barbara Kingsolver book Flight Behavior

Hester to Dellarobia, her daughter-in-law, Flight Behavior, page 462 (ISBN 978-0-571-29081-9).
Flight Behavior (2012)

“We're animals. We're born like every other mammal and we live our whole lives around disguised animal thoughts.”

Barbara Kingsolver Animal Dreams

Animal Dreams, page 118.
Animal Dreams (1990)