Quotessence
Home / Authors / Barbara Kingsolver
Barbara Kingsolver

Barbara Kingsolver Quotes

Novelist

Filter quotes by topic

AllPeopleIfsKnowsThinkingWorldWayWritingChildrenHumansWantAnimalPersonsStillsLooksHeartMenNeedsVegetablesBelieveBook

Famous Barbara Kingsolver Quotes

“We must surely appear to the world as exactly what we are: a nation that organizes its economy around consuming twice as much oil as it produces, and around the profligate wastefulness of the wars and campaigns required to defend such consumption. In recent years we have defined our national interest largely in terms of the oil fields and pipelines we need to procure fuel.”

WorldNeedsYearsWarNationsTermInterestEconomyFieldsProduceOilCampaignsDefinedFuelConsumptionConsumerismOrganizeConsumingOverconsumptionPipelineNational InterestsWastefulnessOil Field
Book:Small Wonder
Create image

“To be hopeful, to embrace one possibility after another--that is surely the basic instinct. Baser even than hate, the thing with teeth, which can be stilled with a tone of voice or stunned by beauty. If the whole world of the living has to turn on the single point of remaining alive, that pointed endurance is the poetry of hope. The thing with feathers.”

IfsWorldWholeHateTurnsVoiceAlivePossibilityEmbraceInstinctWhole WorldTeethToneHopefulEnduranceFeathersTurn-onStunned
Book:High Tide in Tucson
Create image

“There must be limits, somewhere, to the human footprint on this earth. When the whole of the world is reduced to nothing but human product, we will have lost the map that can show us how we got here, and can offer our spirits an answer when we ask why. Surely we are capable of declaring sacred some quarters that we dare not enter or possess.”

WorldHumansWholeShowsEarthSpiritAsksLostAnswersProductsOffersLimitsCapableSacredEnvironmentalDareMapsQuartersStewardshipFootprintDeclaring
Book:Small Wonder
Create image

“If someone does learn about the world from reading a novel of mine, that makes me very happy. It's probably not what brings me into the novel in the first place - I usually am pulled in by some big question about the world and human nature that I'm not going to resolve in the course of the novel. But I'm very devoted to getting my facts straight.”

IfsWorldFirstsHumansDoeFactsBigsCoursesReadingNovelHuman NatureMinesResolveDevotedVery HappyBig Questions
Author:Barbara Kingsolver
Create image

“I didn't study writing in school, I studied biology as an undergraduate and graduate student. So I think that I write fiction in the scientific way. I love invention, obviously; I love creation of character. But I do feel very rooted in the real world, even in the way that I create characters.”

ThinkingWorldWayFeelsWritingRealCharacterSchoolFictionStudyCreationStudentsInventionBiologyReal WorldGraduatesRootedGraduate StudentsUndergraduate
Author:Barbara Kingsolver
Create image

“If my setting is new to a reader, or the concerns of the novel are new, I hope they will learn something about the world. I would like to say that they can trust that what they do learn in the novel will be accurate, because I pay a lot of attention to facts. I do a lot of research to make sure that I'm not giving them, you know, blue moons of Jupiter. It's not science fiction.”

IfsKnowsWorldGivingFactsPayAttentionFictionNovelReaderMoonResearchConcernBlueScience FictionSettingSettingsAccurateJupiterBlue Moon
Author:Barbara Kingsolver
Create image

“April is the cruelest month, T.S. Eliot wrote, by which I think he meant (among other things) that springtime makes people crazy. We expect too much, the world burgeons with promises it can't keep, all passion is really a setup, and we're doomed to get our hearts broken yet again. I agree, and would further add: Who cares? Every spring I go out there anyway, around the bend, unconditionally. ... Come the end of the dark days, I am more than joyful. I'm nuts.”

PeopleThinkingWorldHeartEndsCarePassionDarkToo MuchCrazyBrokenMonthsPromiseSpringAgreeAddNutsJoyfulDoomedWho CaresAprilSpringtimeSetupsEliotDark DaysAround The Bend
Book:Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: Our Year of Seasonal Eating
Create image

“A first child is your own best foot forward, and how you do cheer those little feet as they strike out. You examine every turn of flesh for precocity, and crow it to the world. But the last one: the baby who trails her scent like a flag of surrender through your life when there will be no more coming after--oh, that' s love by a different name.”

WorldFirstsChildrenLittlesDifferentLastsTurnsNamesFeetBabyStrikesFleshSurrenderCheerFlagsScentTrailsCrowDifferent Names
Book:The Poisonwood Bible
Create image

“The moth settled onto the curtain and sat still. It was an astonishing creature, with black and white wings patterned in geometric shapes, scarlet underwings, and a fat white body with black spots running down it like a snowman's coal buttons. No human eye had looked at this moth before; no one would see its friends. So much detail goes unnoticed in the world.”

WorldHumansStillsBodyEyeRunningBlackWhiteShapesCreaturesWingsDetailsFatsSpotsSatBlack And WhiteButtonsCoalCurtainsAstonishingUnnoticedScarletMothsHuman EyesGeometricSnowmanGeometric Shapes
Book:Prodigal Summer
Create image

“A miscarriage is a natural and common event. All told, probably more women have lost a child from this world than haven't. Most don't mention it, and they go on from day to day as if it hadn't happened, so people imagine a woman in this situation never really knew or loved what she had. But ask her sometime: how old would your child be now? And she'll know.”

PeopleIfsKnowsWorldLoveChildrenAgeAsksLostNaturalCommonSituationImagineHappenedEventsHavensThis WorldGoes OnYour ChildrenDay To DayMiscarriage
Author:Barbara Kingsolver
Create image

“In my own worst seasons I've come back from the colorless world of despair by forcing myself to look hard, for a long time, at a single glorious thing: a flame of red geranium outside my bedroom window. And then another: my daughter in a yellow dress. And another: the perfect outline of a full, dark sphere behind the crescent moon. Until I learned to be in love with my life again. Like a stroke victim retraining new parts of the brain to grasp lost skills, I have taught myself joy, over and over again(15).”

WorldLifeLooksLongHardJoyLostDarkMy OwnPerfectBehindsBrainWorstTaughtMoonSkillsDespairLong TimeDaughterRedWindowSeasonsDressesVictimFlamesGloriousMy DaughterYellowSpheresBedroomStrokesRebirthOutlinesColorlessCrescentCrescent Moon
Author:Barbara Kingsolver
Create image

“Our holiday food splurge was a small crate of tangerines, which we found ridiculously thrilling after an eight-month abstinence from citrus.... Lily hugged each one to her chest before undressing it as gently as a doll. Watching her do that as she sat cross-legged on the floor one morning in pink pajamas, with bliss lighting her cheeks, I thought: Lucky is the world, to receive this grateful child. Value is not made of money, but a tender balance of expectation and longing.”

WorldChildrenMadeValuesFoundMorningFoodMonthsBalanceLuckyExpectationsCrossesGratefulLongingEightBlissSatHolidayChestsCheeksThrillingDollsLightingLiliesAbstinencePajamasUndressingCitrusTangerines
Author:Barbara Kingsolver
Create image

“I don't know what rituals my kids will carry into adulthood, whether they'll grow up attached to homemade pizza on Friday nights, or the scent of peppers roasting over a fire, or what. I do know that flavors work their own ways under the skin, into the heart of longing. Where my kids are concerned I find myself hoping for the simplest things: that if someday they crave orchards where their kids can climb into the branches and steal apples, the world will have trees enough with arms to receive them.”

IfsKnowsWorldWayHeartEnoughKidsNightGrowsGrowing UpFireTreeArmsConcernedSkinsLongingStealingApplesBranchesClimbsSomedayRitualAdulthoodScentFlavorSimplestFridayCravePizzaPeppersOrchardHomemadeFriday NightRoasting
Author:Barbara Kingsolver
Create image

“Planning complex, beautiful meals and investing one's heart and time in their preparation is the opposite of self-indulgence. Kitchen-based family gatherings are process-oriented, cooperative, and in the best of worlds, nourishing and soulful. A lot of calories get used up before anyone sits down to consume. But more importantly, a lot of talk happens first, news exchanged, secrets revealed across generations, paths cleared with a touch on the arm. I have given and received some of my life's most important hugs with those big oven-mitt potholders on both hands.”

WorldFirstsHeartImportantSelfHandsBigsHappensBeautifulUsedGivenProcessSecretPathGenerationsArmsNewsOppositesComplexesInvestingPlanningPreparationMealsKitchenHugGatheringIndulgenceCaloriesOvensSoulfulCooperativesSelf IndulgenceFamily Gathering
Book:Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: Our Year of Seasonal Eating
Create image

“I can think of no honorable answer. 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? There is nothing about the United States I can really explain to this child of another world.”

ThinkingWorldChildrenI CanStatesAnswersUnitedUnited StatesFireQuietEmptyBonesDustBrandsStomachDirtHonorableDeliberateAnother WorldDampToothpasteEmpty Stomach
Book:The Poisonwood Bible
Create image

“What keeps you going isn't some fine destination but just the road you're on, and the fact that you know how to drive. You keep your eyes open, you see this damned-to-hell world you got born into, and you ask yourself, 'What life can I live that will let me breathe in & out and love somebody or something and not run off screaming into the woods?”

KnowsWorldFactsEyeRunningAsksBornKnow HowHellFineAnd LoveLet MeWoodsBreatheDestination
Author:Barbara Kingsolver
Create image

“Gilbert has established herself as a straight-up storyteller who dares us into adventures of worldly discovery, and this novel stands as a winning next act. “The Signature of All Things” is a bracing homage to the many natures of genius and the inevitable progress of ideas, in a world that reveals its best truths to the uncommonly patient minds.”

WorldMindIdeasTruthNextWinningNovelProgressAdventureGeniusDiscoveryAll ThingsPatientDareInevitableStorytellerWorldlySignaturesHomageStraight Up
Author:Barbara Kingsolver
Create image

“The arc of history is longer than human vision. It bends. We abolished slavery, we granted universal suffrage. We have done hard things before. And every time it took a terrible fight between people who could not imagine changing the rules, and those who said, 'We already did. We have made the world new.' The hardest part will be to convince yourself of the possibilities, and hang on.”

PeopleWorldHumansMadeSaidHardDoneFightingVisionImaginePossibilityTerribleUniversalSlaveryHardestGrantedConvinceArcsHard ThingsSuffrageUniversal Suffrage
Author:Barbara Kingsolver
Create image