Barbara Kingsolver: Thing

“The friend who holds your hand and says the wrong thing is made of dearer stuff than the one who stays away.”

“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.”

“In a world as wrong as this one, all we can do is make things as right as we can.”

“Memory is a complicated thing, a relative to truth, but not its twin.”

“The most important thing about a person is always the thing you don't know.”

“It's frightening when things you love appear suddenly changed from what you have always known.”

“How pointless life could be, what a foolish business of inventing things to love, just so you could dread losing them.”

“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.”

“It's the one thing we never quite get over: that we contain our own future.”

“It's surprising how much memory is built around things unnoticed at the time.”

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

“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.”

“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 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.”

“In Kilanga, people knew nothing of things they might have had - a Frigidaire? a washer-dryer combination? Really, they'd sooner imagine a tree that could pull up its feet and go bake bread. It didn't occur to them to feel sorry for themselves.”

“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.”

“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.”