“You just read your books and go on a hundred miles away, You ignore me.” — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
“A novel! Why do you say this won't liberate anyone? Where does any man go to be free, whether he is poor… — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
“A novel has to entertain -- that's the contract with the reader: you give me ten hours and I'll give you a… — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
How strange to read of a place in a book, and then stand on it, listen to the birds sing, and spit… — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
“I vow I shall give all my very best books to the underprivileged, once I have read them” — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
Most every book I bring into the world is like birthing a baby; it's a lot of effort! — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
When you pick up a novel from the bed side table, you put down your own life at the same time and… — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
I don't bring expectations to any of my books. I don't tell people what to do. I want to invite them in. — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
You always need that spark of imagination. Sometimes I'm midway through a book before it happens. However, I don't wait for the… — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
“I should like to write my books only for the dear person who lies awake reading in bed until page last, then… — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
Literature is one of the few kinds of writing in the world that does not tell you what to buy, want, see,… — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
“I thought everything in the world was already discovered. Already in my books. A lot of dead stuff that put me to… — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
Readers of fiction read, I think, for a deeper embrace of the world, of reality. And that's brave. I never get over… — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
What keeps me awake at the wheel is the thrill of trying something completely new with each book. I’m not a risk-taker… — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
Beginning a novel is always hard. It feels like going nowhere. I always have to write at least 100 pages that go… — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
If my setting is new to a reader, or the concerns of the novel are new, I hope they will learn something… — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
Literature duplicates the experience of living in a way that nothing else can, drawing you so fully into another life that you… — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
Gilbert has established herself as a straight-up storyteller who dares us into adventures of worldly discovery, and this novel stands as a… — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
If someone does learn about the world from reading a novel of mine, that makes me very happy. It's probably not what… — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
A novel can educate to some extent, but first a novel has to entertain. That's the contract with the reader: you give… — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
Watching Italians eat (especially men, I have to say) is a form of tourism the books don't tell you about. They close… — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
“A novel works it's magic by putting a reader inside another person's life. The pace is as slow as life. It's as… — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
“I took my time exploring. I savored the first minutes in a new home. Carlos would always go straight to unpacking boxes,… — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
Literature sucks you into another psyche. So the creation of empathy necessarily influences how you'll behave to other people. — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
I attempted briefly to consecrate myself in the public library, believing every crack in my soul could be chinked with a book. — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
Every time I write a new novel about something sombre and sobering and terrible I think, 'oh Lord, they're not going to… — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
I believe with all my heart in delivering on my contract with my readers. They've got plenty of other things to do,… — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
Write a nonfiction book, and be prepared for the legion of readers who are going to doubt your fact. But write a… — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
We're surrounded by mandates, and I believe that literature should be mandate-free. I feel very strongly about that. — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
Good fiction creates empathy. A novel takes you somewhere and asks you to look through the eyes of another person, to live… — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
People in my novels always have terrible problems. If they are not terrible, I make them more terrible. — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
Most of my books have been about the complex ways an individual depends on community. — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
I learned to write by reading the kind of books I wished I'd written. — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
Quit smoking in the hope of growing old. It takes a long time to write. People go to books for wisdom and… — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
Plot comes first. The plot is the archictecture of your novel. You wouldn't build a house without a plan. If I wrote… — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
“We newspaper readers all have our pet vexations. Somewhere in one of those sections is the column we anxiously turn to for… — 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 Image
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 Image
Cooking is 80 percent confidence, a skill best acquired starting from when the apron strings wrap around you twice. — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
“In Bobby Ogle's version of heaven everyone would wind up in one place, criminals and Muslims included.” — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
“It's what you do that makes your soul, not the other way around.” — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
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 Image
“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 Image
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 Image
