Quotes from Barbara Kingsolver

Forgive me, Dellarobia. It's a selfish habit. I never learn anything from listening to myself.

It's the radio, you see. The radio makes everyone feel the same thing at the same time. Instead of millions of various thoughts, one big psychological fixation. The radio commands our gut response.

Maybe it's true what they say, that as long as you're nursing your own pain, whatever it is, you'll turn your back on others in the same boat. You'll want to believe the fix they're in is their own damn fault.

The tree was intact, not cut or broken by wind. What a waste. After maybe centuries of survival it had simply let go of the ground, the wide fist of its root mass ripped up and resting naked above a clay gash in the wooded mountainside. Like herself, it just seemed to have come loose from its station in life.

One other person can go a long way towards making your world right, she said, but the support has to run both ways. Saying love has to come from a strong place, not just grabbing whatever's in reach. You can't choose your family, but partner is your best shot at a decent do-over.

I was struck through with my own wayward brand of reverence: praise be the lord of all plagues and secret afflictions! If God had amused himself inventing the lilies of the field, he surely knocked His own socks off with the African parasites.

Every one of us is called upon, probably many times, to start a new life. A frightening diagnosis, a marriage, a move, loss of a job or a limb or a loved one, a graduation, bringing a new baby home: it's impossible to think at first how this all will be possible. Eventually, what moves it all forward is the subterranean ebb and flow of being alive among the living.

I hadn't thought before about how self-sufficiency could turn on you in old age or sickness.

Pushing a refrigerated green vegetable from one end of the earth to another is, let's face it, a bizarre use of fuel. But there's a simpler reason to pass up off-season asparagus: it's inferior.

I am losing faith in such a simple thing as despising an enemy with unequivocal righteousness.

We only knew, somewhat abstractly, we were going to spend a year integrating our food choices with our family values, which include both "love your neighbor" and "try not to wreck every blooming thing on the planet while you're here.

The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope.