Writing Quotes by Barbara Kingsolver

Silence has many advantages…I write and draw in my notebook and I read anything I please.

— Barbara Kingsolver

My way of finding a place in this world is to write one.

— Barbara Kingsolver

I never think that anything I'm writing is bluntly political in any way. I'm not going for commentary.

— Barbara Kingsolver

A writer's occupational hazard: I think of eavesdropping as minding my business.

— Barbara Kingsolver

There is no perfect time to write. There is only now.

— Barbara Kingsolver

I know I have to write about the things that keep me awake at night.

— Barbara Kingsolver

Don't wait for the muse. She has a lousy work ethic. Writers just write.

— Barbara Kingsolver

“The writing of fiction is a dance between truth and invention”

— Barbara Kingsolver

I write every moment that is humanly possible. I write every day and every night. The only discipline I lack is the…

— Barbara Kingsolver

Pay attention to your passions. They are the key to starting and finishing the book you are meant to write. I don't…

— Barbara Kingsolver

It takes some courage to write fiction about politically controversial topics. The dread is you'll be labeled a political writer.

— Barbara Kingsolver

Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, writers will go to stupefying lengths to get the infernal roar of words out of their…

— Barbara Kingsolver

Root out all the "to be" verbs in your prose and bludgeon them until dead. No "It was" or "they are" or…

— Barbara Kingsolver

Because I write fiction that is based in the real world, it's going to lead people into some of the modern dilemmas…

— Barbara Kingsolver

Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear…

— Barbara Kingsolver

Quit smoking in the hope of growing old. It takes a long time to write. People go to books for wisdom and…

— Barbara Kingsolver

Literature duplicates the experience of living in a way that nothing else can, drawing you so fully into another life that you…

— Barbara Kingsolver

“I try to be open-minded. And yet this food writer has less sense than God gave a goose about where food comes…

— Barbara Kingsolver

I can count all the ways in which being a mother has enriched my understanding of the world, of character, my sense…

— Barbara Kingsolver

The writing has been on the wall for some years now, but we are a nation illiterate in the language of the…

— Barbara Kingsolver

Literature is one of the few kinds of writing in the world that does not tell you what to buy, want, see,…

— Barbara Kingsolver

I concentrate on character, theme, language, structure, voice. It actually surprises me that no matter what I write, people declare it "intently…

— Barbara Kingsolver

In fact, one of the things that I really love about literary fiction is that it's one of the few kinds of…

— Barbara Kingsolver

It is harrowing for me to try to teach 20-year-old students, who earnestly want to improve their writing. The best I can…

— Barbara Kingsolver

When I sit down to write, I consider myself an artist.

— Barbara Kingsolver

I learned to write by reading the kind of books I wished I'd written.

— Barbara Kingsolver

It's a funny thing: people often ask how I discipline myself to write. I can't begin to understand the question. For me,…

— Barbara Kingsolver

I learned to produce whether I wanted to or not. It would be easy to say oh, I have writer's block, oh,…

— Barbara Kingsolver

What a writer can do, what a fiction writer or a poet or an essay writer can do is re-engage people with…

— Barbara Kingsolver

If you're writing, you're a writer. If you're talking about it or thinking about it, I'm not so sure. Writing is ninety-eight…

— Barbara Kingsolver

I know I'm a rare person, a trained scientist who writes fiction, because so few contemporary novelists engage with science.

— Barbara Kingsolver

The artist deals with what cannot be said in words. The novelist says in words what cannot be said in words.

— Barbara Kingsolver

I'm widest awake as a writer doing something new, engaged in a process I'm not sure I can finish, generating at the…

— Barbara Kingsolver

Write a nonfiction book, and be prepared for the legion of readers who are going to doubt your fact. But write a…

— Barbara Kingsolver

He had senile dementia and liked to go outside naked, but he could still do two things perfectly: win at checkers and…

— Barbara Kingsolver

I don't *ever* write about real people. Art is supposed to be better than that. If you want a slice of life,…

— Barbara Kingsolver

For me, writing time has always been precious, something I wait for and am eager for and make the best use of.…

— Barbara Kingsolver

This manuscript of yours that has just come back from another editor is a precious package. Don't consider it rejected. Consider that…

— Barbara Kingsolver

I struggle with confidence, every time. I’m never completely sure I can write another book. Maybe my scope is too grand, my…

— Barbara Kingsolver

Beginning a novel is always hard. It feels like going nowhere. I always have to write at least 100 pages that go…

— Barbara Kingsolver