God doesn’t need to punish us. He just grants us a long enough life to punish ourselves. — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
My father wears his faith like the bronze breastplate of God's footsoldiers while our mother's is more like a good cloth coat… — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
In the places that call me out, I know I'll recover my wordless childhood trust in the largeness of life and its… — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
the conspicuous consumption of limited resources has yet to be accepted widely as a spiritual error, or even bad manners — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
“When the spirit passed through him he groaned, throwing body and soul into his weekly purge. The "Amen enema", as I call… — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
Empathy is really the opposite of spiritual meanness. It's the capacity to understand that every war is both won and lost. And… — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
I could never work out whether we were to view religion as a life-insurance policy or a life sentence. — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
“The purpose of art is to elevate the spirit or to pay a surgeon’s bill. Or both. It can help a person… — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
I used to think religion was just more of the same thing. Dump responsibility on the big guy. Now I see an… — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
“But other people fast or walk long pilgrimages to honor the spirit of what they believe makes our world whole and lovely.… — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
What we lose in our great human exodus from the land is a rooted sense, as deep and intangible as religious faith,… — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
“Most of us are creatures so comforted by habit, it can take something on the order of religion to invoke new, more… — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
I wonder that religion can live or die on the strength of a faint, stirring breeze. The scent trail shifts, causing the… — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
I could never work out whether we were to view religion as a life-insurance policy or a life sentence. I can understand… — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
“Our culture is not unacquainted with the idea of food as a spiritually loaded commodity. We're just particular about which spiritual arguments… — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
“So you make this deal with the gods. You do these dances and they'll send rain and good crops and the whole… — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
“Most of what's known about religious practices in pre-Hispanic Mexico has come to us through a Catholic parish priest named Hernando Ruiz… — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
“Jesus was a more reliable backer, evidently, less likely to drink himself unconscious or get liver cancer. No wonder people chose Him as their… — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share
Now I'm starting to think he wasn't supposed to be my whole life, he was just this doorway to me. — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share
Cooking is 80 percent confidence, a skill best acquired starting from when the apron strings wrap around you twice. — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share
“In Bobby Ogle's version of heaven everyone would wind up in one place, criminals and Muslims included.” — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share
“Lusa turned to Crys, her eyes shining. "That was a luna." Crys shrugged. "So?" "So? So what? You want it should sing, too?” — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share
“An imperfectly remembered life is a useless treachery. Every day, more fragments of the past roll around heavily in the chambers of an empty… — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share
Respecting the dignity of a spectacular food means enjoying it at its best. Europeans celebrate the short season of abundant asparagus as a form… — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share
“Somehow it had come to pass that this man was her whole world, and she had failed to take his measure.” — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share
After 'The Poisonwood Bible' was published, several people believed that my parents were missionaries, which could not be further from the truth. — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share
I can count all the ways in which being a mother has enriched my understanding of the world, of character, my sense of the… — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share
But we've all ended up giving body and soul to Africa, one way or another. Even Adah, who's becoming an expert in tropical epidemiology… — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share
If the Lord hasn't got a boyfriend lined up for me to marry, that's his business. — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share
