Quotes from Barbara Kingsolver

At sunrise it always seems like you've got a good crack at getting everything done, but at sunset you know that you didn't.

How are people so irrational?" he asked, but he knew. Even the abolitionists had no wish to be placed inside creation, subject to its laws. They wished to rule over it from the head of God's table.

For some, a lousy day's work will get you yelled at. For farmers, it's live or die.

Eyes raised up, body tethered by one long thread to the big stormy sky, the whole of him up there with his words, talking to whoever was listening. I've not seen a sight to match it. No bones of his had ever been shoved in a feed bag. The man was a giant.

I went on foot because I still had feet to carry me.

If his guilt made him a tyrant before men, it made him like a child before his God. Not a helpless or pleading child, but a petulant one, the type of tough boy who's known too little love and is quick to blame others for his mistakes.

I could never work out whether we were to view religion as a life-insurance policy or a life sentence. I can understand a wrathful God who'd just as soon dangle us all from a hook. And I can understand a tender, unprejudiced Jesus. But I could never quite feature the two of them living in the same house. You wind up walking on eggshells, never knowing which Tata Nzolo is home at the moment.

If no one has said outright that spying on Mr. Axelroot is a sin, then God probably couldn't technically hold it against me.

This is why we have families.... So we never have to go a single day without worrying ourselves sick.

Here, if any terrorists came flying over, they'd look down on trashed-out mine craters and blown-up mountains and say, "Keep going. This place already got taken out." It was hard to see how September 11 was my fight. As far as doing good for my fellow man, my better option was football.

History is not good news or bad news, it's just one big story unreeling. There are no small parts, only small actors.

All those hopes placed in such a precarious vessel.