Barbara Kingsolver Quotes

Willa believed in the power of worry to keep another human from flying out of orbit.

Willa’s lifelong service to the duty of proper order now seemed like an idiot’s game.

Words were not just words, describing things a person could see. Even if most did not. Maybe they had to know a thing first, to see it.

You can fool history sometimes, but you can’t fool the memory of your intimates.

You can resign from the Woman's Club, but the world is all, you can't just stop attending.

You can't know somebody, I thought, till you've followed him home.

You could allow a gentleman the privacy of his piss.

You think you're no good, so you can't do good things. Jesus, Codi, how long are you going to keep limping around on that crutch? It's the other way around, it's what you *do* that makes you who you a...

You think you're the foreigner here, and I'm the American, and I just look the other way while the President or somebody sends down this and that . . . to torture people with. But nobody asked my perm...

You're asking yourself, Can I give this child the best possible upbringing and keep her out of harm's way her whole life long? The answer is no, you can't. But nobody else can either. Not a state home...

You're thinking of revolution as a great all-or-nothing. I think of it as one more morning in a muggy cotton field, checking the undersides of leaves to see what's been there, figuring out what to do...

Your dreams, what you hope for and all that, it's not separate from your life. It grows right up out of it.

Zeke embodied the contradiction of his generation: jaded about the fate of the world, idealistic about personal prospects.

[from an entry by her daughter Camille] ...research published fifteen years ago in the New England Journal of Medicine: eggs from chickens that ranged freely on grass have about half the cholesterol o...

[from an entry by her daughter Camille] American culture doesn't allow much room for slow reflection. I watch the working people who are supposed to be my role models getting pushed to go, go, go and...

[from an entry by her daughter Camille] If nobody is spritzing chemicals on the predators, all a plant can do is toughen up by manufacturing its own disease/pest-fighting compounds. That's why organic...

[from an entry by her daughter Camille] Organic produce actually delivers more nutritional bang for the buck. These fruits and vegetables are tougher creatures than those labeled conventional, precise...

[from an excerpt by her daughter Camille] Living on the land that has grown my food gives me a sense of security I'm lucky to have. Feeling safe isn't so easy for people my age, who face odious threat...

Admired their own steadfast lives. Right up to the day when hope in all its versions went out of stock,

Bare wood of her son beneath the bark