Barbara Kingsolver Quotes

“Listen. To live is to be marked. To live is to change, to acquire the words of a story, and that is the only celebration we mortals really know. In perfect stillness, frankly, I've only found sorrow.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible

“Most of them don't know what communism is, could not pick it out of a lineup. They only know what anticommunism is. The two are practically unrelated.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, The Lacuna

“Why must some of us deliberate between brands of toothpaste while others deliberate between damp dirt and bone dust to quiet the fire of an empty stomach lining?”
― Barbara Kingsolver

“Life proceeds, it enrages. The untouched ones spend their luck without a thought, believing they deserve it.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, The Lacuna

“...when the public nerve is aroused, the most impressive capacity of man is his skill for lying.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, The Lacuna

“Outside in the sun the Holy Mother stood on her pedestal in the garden, sorry but unsympathetic. The usual position of mothers.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, The Lacuna

“Thursday. My mind is made up. When he calls on the weekend, I’ll say no. There’s nothing left between us to talk about, and I’ll tell him that, with the kindness he’s due in his difficult situation, and the politeness I can’t seem to help anyway. Half the time when I try to admonish my students, they mistake it for praise. Well, fine, there’s no shame in good”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Partita

“He said half of him was sorry over it, and the other half wasn't, so now he would stay cut in two forever.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Demon Copperhead

“If I never could buy what Sigurd was selling, this was the reason. My kind of people weren’t going to take over anything. If they were at the bottom of life’s pile, they were mostly mad at themselves. I’m sure my father believed to his very bones, this is a free country and you get as much as you’ll work for. Or little. Period. A man might rail his fist at God or drink himself blind, but his heart will go on telling him the same truth: If you hate what you’re reaping, you should have tended better to sowing the seed. Where I come from, that’s adulthood. The rock-solid belief you’re living the fate you’ve earned. Richer, happier people believed this too, I’d come to understand, from my life on this campus. The deserving of good fortune, I’d felt even from Jon Link and his family, not that we talked about it. I just saw it dyed in their wool, the sense that having money was proof of their industry and cleverness. That wealth and education give you the right to be in charge of people who don’t have much of either. Not just in charge, possibly more favored by God.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Partita

“I should have understood, I was only ever going to be one among so many. But that’s the thing about irresistible people: They make you feel like you are the one among many”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Partita

“Friday, I woke up thinking about my hands. I usually don’t, not anymore, unless something hurts. Which is the thankless custom of human creatures I guess, to walk around inside these marvelous instruments with full expectation they’ll carry on being marvelous. I should know better, though. Marvels come in kinds, and mine was this hand I held out in front of me in the dim morning.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Partita

“Why didn’t you call me?” Bassoon asked, and Ina looked at me with the same question in her eyes. Ina, who didn’t even know about my hand until she heard it through the department grapevine. We hadn’t spoken in After people realize they should have been paying attention, they ask you this, Why didn’t you say something? Not before.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Partita