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
When I want to take God at his word exactly, I take a peep out the window at His creation. Because that,… — 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
Wherever I am, let me never forget to distinguish want from need — 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 I want is so simple I almost can't say it: elementary kindness. — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
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 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
Now, see, that's why you want Internet friends. You can find people just exactly like you. Screw your neighbors and your family,… — 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
Honk if you love Jesus, text while driving if you want to meet up. — 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
Oh, mercy. If it catches you in the wrong frame of mind, the King James Bible can make you want to drink… — 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
The writing has been on the wall for some years now, but we are a nation illiterate in the language of the… — 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
Want is a thing that unfurls unbidden like fungus, opening large upon itself, stopless, filling the sky. But needs, from one day… — 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
The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can… — 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've never gotten over high school, to the extent that I'm still a little surprised that my friends want to hang out… — 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
You know what the issue is? Do you want to know? It's what these guys have decided to call America. They have… — 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