Quotes from Barbara Kingsolver

Value is not made of money, but a tender balance of expectation and longing.

It's the one thing we never quite get over: that we contain our own future.

Will you explain to me why people encourage delusional behaviour in children, and medicate it in adults?

But Anatole said suddenly, 'Don't expect God's protection in places beyond God's dominion. It will only make you feel punished. I'm warning you. When things go bad, you will blame yourself.' 'What are you telling me?' 'I am telling you what I'm telling you. Don't try to make life a mathematics problem with yourself in the center and everything coming out equal. When you are good, bad things can still happen. And if you are bad, you can still be lucky.

He was getting that look he gets, oh boy, like Here comes Moses tromping down off of Mount Syanide with ten fresh ways to wreck your life.

Mr. Shepherd, ye cannot stop a bad thought from coming into your head. But ye need not pull up a chair and bide it sit down. - Mrs. Brown

Maybe he's been in Africa so long he has forgotten that we Christians have our own system of marriage, and it is called Monotony.

I learned to write by reading the kind of books I wished I'd written.

You can curse the dead or pray for them, but don't expect them to do a thing for you. They're far too interested in watching us, to see what in heaven's name we will do next.

There can be no greater spiritual accomplishment than to come through brutal trials and then look back and see that mean times did not render us mean spirits.

Maybe life doesn't get any better than this, or any worse, and what we get is just what we're willing to find: small wonders, where they grow.

Be careful what you give children, for sooner or later you are sure to get it back.