Barbara Kingsolver Quotes

357 quotes in 4555 categories

• But I've swallowed my pride before, that's for sure. I'm practically lined with my mistakes on the inside like a bad-wallpapered bathroom.
• What I want is so simple I almost can't say it: elementary kindness.
• the conspicuous consumption of limited resources has yet to be accepted widely as a spiritual error, or even bad manners
• Value is not made of money, but a tender balance of expectation and longing.
• 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 and…
• When moral superiority combines with billowing ignorance, they fill up a hot-air balloon that's awfully hard not to poke.
• It feels strange to me to be living in a box, hiding from the steadying influence of the moon; wearing the hide of a cow,…
• What we lose in our great human exodus from the land is a rooted sense, as deep and intangible as religious faith, of why we…
• Maybe he's been in Africa so long he has forgotten that we Christians have our own system of marriage, and it is called Monotony.
• I could never work out whether we were to view religion as a life-insurance policy or a life sentence. I can understand a wrathful God…
• For time and eternity there have been fathers like Nathan who simply can see no way to have a daughter but to own her like…
• On the day I swore to uphold the Hippocratic oath, the small hairs on the back of my neck stood up as I waited for…
• A choir of seedlings arching their necks out of rotted tree stumps, sucking life out of death. I am the forest's conscience, but remember, the…
• We came from Bethlehem, Georgia bearing Betty Crocker cake mixes into the jungle.
• There is a strange moment in time, after something horrible happens, when you know it's true, but you haven't told anyone yet.
• The friend who holds your hand and says the wrong thing is made of dearer stuff than the one who stays away.
• Most of the girls my age, or even younger, have babies. They appear way too young to be married, till you look in their eyes.…
• But Anatole said suddenly, 'Don't expect God's protection in places beyond God's dominion. It will only make you feel punished. I'm warning you. When things…
• Of the two hundred bones in the human body, more than a quarter are in the foot. It is a more complicated instrument than an…
• You see mother, you had no life of your own. They have no idea. One has only a life of one's own.

Browse Barbara Kingsolver Quotes by Category