Quotes from Barbara Kingsolver

Poor thing, thought Garnett, to have to commit yourself so hard to one moment of poor judgment.

Jesus was a more reliable backer, evidently, less likely to drink himself unconscious or get liver cancer. No wonder people chose Him as their number-one friend.

First, I got myself born. The worst of the job was up to me.

People had to manage terrible truths.

Solitude is only a human presumption. Every quiet step is thunder to beetle life underfoot; every choice is a world made new for the chosen.

it's the thing you fear most that walks beside you all the time.

Believe this: the mistakes are part of the story

The daily work—that goes on, it adds up. It goes into the ground, into crops, into children's bellies and their bright eyes. Good things don't get lost.

He's that same kind of good like you are. Like there's some metal or something in you that won't melt down, no matter what.

If the grown-up version of me could have one chance at walking backwards into this story, part of me wishes I could sit down on the back pew with that pissed-off kid in his overly tight church clothes and Darkhawk attitude, and tell him: You think you're giant but you are such a small speck in the screwed-up world. This is not about you.

I was still a bit appalled that God would set down his barefoot boy and girl dollies into an Eden where, presumably, He had just turned loose elephantiasis and microbes that eat the human cornea. Now I understand, God is not just rooting for the dollies. We and our vermin all blossomed together out of the same humid soil in the Great Rift Valley, and so far no one is really winning.

It's football. Take that out of high school, it's church with no Jesus. Who would even go?