Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
You could love your crazy people, even admire them, instead of resenting that they're not self-sufficient. — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
“I think most people are the same. Until they’ve gone somewhere.” — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
Will you explain to me why people encourage delusional behaviour in children, and medicate it in adults? — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
I know people. Most have no earthly notion of the price of a snow-white conscience. — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
Few people know so clearly what they want. Most people can't even think what to hope for when they throw a penny… — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
Forgive me, O Heavenly Father, according to the multitude of Thy mercies. I have lusted in my heart to break a man's… — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
When people are frightened about going hungry and paying their mortgages, a scarcity model begins to prevail; they fear someone else will… — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
There's such a gulf between yourself and who you were then, but people speak to that other person and it answers; it's… — 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
Last time I talked to her she didn't sound like herself. She's depressed. It's awful what happens when people run out of… — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
“It is true I do not speak as well as I can think. But that is true of most people, as nearly… — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
What we end up calling history is a kind of knife, slicing down through time. A few people are hard enough to… — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
The arc of history is longer than human vision. It bends. We abolished slavery, we granted universal suffrage. We have done hard… — 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
Over the last decade our country has lost an average of 300 farms a week. Large or small, each of those was… — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
With all due respect for the wondrous ways people have invented to amuse themselves and one another on paved surfaces, I find… — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
You force people to stop asking questions, and before you know it they have auctioned off the question mark, or sold it… — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
Human manners are wildly inconsistent; plenty of people have said so. But this one takes the cake: the manner in which we're… — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
I concentrate on character, theme, language, structure, voice. It actually surprises me that no matter what I write, people declare it "intently… — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
You think you're the foreigner here, and I'm the American, and I just look the other way while the President or somebody… — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
Patriotism threatens free speech with death. It is infuriated by thoughtful hesitation, constructive criticism of our leaders and pleas for peace. It… — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
There are always more questions. Science as a process is never complete. It is not a foot race, with a finish line…… — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
I grew up aware of all the people I depended on and who depended on me. — 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
“Well, the ancients might not have been very heroic. Most of them were probably like Mother, crouched somewhere trying to work out… — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
You can’t replace people you love with other people…But you can trust that you’re not going to run out of people to… — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
It's terrible to lose somebody, but it's also true that some people never have anybody to lose, and I think that's got… — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
Everyone should get dirt on his hands each day. Doctors, intellectuals. Politicians, most of all. How can we presume to uplift the… — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
I believe that the people who survive a cataclysm, rather than those who stand by and analyze it, are nearly always the… — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
It occurs to her that there is one thing about people you can never understand well enough: how entirely inside themselves they… — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
there are people who read my work and accuse me of being political! As far as I'm concerned that's like accusing a… — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
Terms like that, 'Humane Society,' are devised with people like me in mind, who don't care to dwell on what happens to… — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
Silence has many advantages. When you do not speak, other people presume you to be deaf or feeble-minded and promptly make a… — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
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 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
