Barbara Kingsolver citations

Page 3

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

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

“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.”

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

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

“I thought: this is how life is, ridiculous beyond comprehension.”

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

“Honk if you love Jesus, text while driving if you want to meet up.”

“Alice wonders if other women in the middle of the night have begun to resent their Formica.”

“No matter what kind of night you're having, morning always wins.”

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

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

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

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

“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.”

“the conspicuous consumption of limited resources has yet to be accepted widely as a spiritual error, or even bad manners”

“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.”

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

“That was when we smelled the rain. It was so strong it seemed like more than just a smell. When we stretched out our hands we could practically feel it rising up from the ground. I don’t know how a person could ever describe that scent.”

“He was getting that look he gets, oh boy, like Here comes Moses tromping down off of Mount Syanide with ten fresh ways to wreck your life.”

“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.”