"In a world as wrong as this one, all we can do is make things as right as we can."
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Quote collection
Barbara Kingsolver quotes (page 3 of 23)
451 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"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."
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"Honk if you love Jesus, text while driving if you want to meet up."
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"We're animals. We're born like every other mammal and we live our whole lives around disguised animal thoughts."
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"Wars and elections are both too big and too small to matter in the long run. The daily work - that goes on, it adds up."
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"Root out all the "to be" verbs in your prose and bludgeon them until dead. No "It was" or "they are" or "I am." Don't let it be, make it happen."
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"Cooking is 80 percent confidence, a skill best acquired starting from when the apron strings wrap around you twice."
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"Poetry feels like a country I visit without a passport, where I look around furtively, grab hold of something precious, and try to smuggle it back across the border. Any poem I get written down feels like contraband to me."
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"Sadness is more or less like a head cold - with patience, it passes. Depression is like cancer."
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"A writer's occupational hazard: I think of eavesdropping as minding my business."
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"One of the very first things I figured out about life...is that it's better to be a hopeful person than a cynical, grumpy one, because you have to live in the same world either way, and if you're hopeful, you have more fun."
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"Memories do not always soften with time; some grow edges like knives."
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"Most people no longer believe that buying sneakers made in Asian sweatshops is a kindness to those child laborers. Farming is similar. In every country on earth, the most human scenario for farmers is likely to be feeding those who live nearby-if international markets would allow them to do it. Food transport has become a bizarre and profitable economic equation that's no longer really about feeding anyone ... If you care about farmers, let the potatoes stay home."
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"A flower is a plant's way of making love."
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"Respecting the dignity of a spectacular food means enjoying it at its best. Europeans celebrate the short season of abundant asparagus as a form of holiday. In the Netherlands the first cutting coincides with Father's Day, on which restaurants may feature all-asparagus menus and hand out neckties decorated with asparagus spears."
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"There is no point treating a depressed person as though she were just feeling sad, saying, 'There now, hang on, you'll get over it.' Sadness is more or less like a head cold- with patience, it passes. Depression is like cancer."
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"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?"
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"Insomnia’s different,” I said. It was hard to explain this to people. “You know the light that comes on when you open the refrigerator door? Just imagine it stays on all the time, even after you close the door. That’s what it’s like in my head. The light stays on."
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"The friend who holds your hand and says the wrong thing is made of dearer stuff than the one who stays away."
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"I know I have to write about the things that keep me awake at night."
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