Quotes from work

The Poisonwood Bible

“Silence has many advantages. When you do not speak, other people presume you to be deaf or feeble-minded and promptly make a show of their own limitations.”

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

“Everything you're sure is right can be wrong in another place.”

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

“Sugar, it's no parade but you'll get down the street one way or another, so you'd just as well throw your shoulders back and pick up the pace.”

“I’ve seen how you can’t learn anything when you’re trying to look like the smartest person in the room.”

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

“He was my father. I own half his genes, and all of his history. Believe this: the mistakes are part of the story. I am born of a man who believed he could tell nothing but the truth, while he set down for all time the Poisonwood Bible.”

“I know how people are, with their habits of mind. Most will sail through from cradle to grave with a conscience clean as snow… I know people. Most have no earthly notion of the price of a snow-white conscience.”

“Misunderstanding is my cornerstone. It's everyone's, come to think of it. Illusions mistaken for truth are the pavement under our feet.”

“There is a strange moment in time, after something horrible happens, when you know it's true, but you haven't told anyone yet.”

“Every betrayal contains a perfect moment, a coin stamped heads or tails with salvation on the other side.”

“This Forest eats itself and lives forever.”

“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.”

“It is true that I do not speak as well as I can think. But that is true of most people, as nearly as I can tell.”

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

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

“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.”