Barbara Kingsolver: Living

Barbara Kingsolver is American author, poet and essayist. Explore interesting quotes on living.
Barbara Kingsolver: 238 quotes0 likes

“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.”

Barbara Kingsolver The Poisonwood Bible

Source: The Poisonwood Bible

“To live is to change, to acquire the words of a story, and that is the only celebration we mortals really know.”

Barbara Kingsolver The Poisonwood Bible

Source: The Poisonwood Bible

“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.”

Barbara Kingsolver book Prodigal Summer

Source: Prodigal Summer

“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.”

Barbara Kingsolver The Poisonwood Bible

Source: The Poisonwood Bible

“I'm of a fearsome mind to throw my arms around every living librarian who crosses my path, on behalf of the souls they never knew they saved.”

Barbara Kingsolver

“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.”

Barbara Kingsolver The Poisonwood Bible

Source: The Poisonwood Bible

“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

“This Forest eats itself and lives forever.”

Barbara Kingsolver The Poisonwood Bible

Source: The Poisonwood Bible

“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.”

Barbara Kingsolver

“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.”

Barbara Kingsolver The Bean Trees

Animal Dreams.
Animal Dreams (1990)
Variant: The very least you can do in your life is to 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.
Source: The Bean Trees

“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)

“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)

“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)