Partita Quotes

“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

“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