Quotes by Barbara Kingsolver

About Barbara Kingsolver:

Barbara Kingsolver is an American novelist, essayist and poet. She was raised in rural Kentucky and lived briefly in the Congo in her early childhood. Kingsolver earned degrees in biology at DePauw University and the University of Arizona and worked as a freelance writer before she began writing novels. Her widely known works include The Poisonwood Bible, the tale of a missionary family in the Congo, and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, a non-fiction account of her family's attempts to eat locally.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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.

Barbara Kingsolver

While we watched without comprehension, she moved away to where none of us wanted to follow. Ruth May shrank back through the narrow passage between this brief fabric of light and all the rest of what there is for us: the long waiting. Now she will w...

Barbara Kingsolver

A choir of seedlings arching their necks out of rotted tree stumps, sucking life out of death. I am the forest's conscience, but remember, the forest eats itself and lives forever.

Barbara Kingsolver

Because I could not stop for death he kindly stopped for me, or paused at least to strike a glancing blow with his sky-blue mouth as he passed.

Barbara Kingsolver

Listen: being dead is not worse than being alive. It is different though. You could say the view is larger.

Barbara Kingsolver

He warned Mother not to flout God's Will by expecting too much of us. "Sending a girl to college is like pouring water in your shoes,' he still loves to say, as often as possible. 'It's hard to say which is worse, seeing it run out and waste the wate...

Barbara Kingsolver

There is a strange moment in time, after something horrible happens, when you know it's true, but you haven't told anyone yet.

Barbara Kingsolver

Mother, you can still hold hold on but forgive, forgive and give for long as long as we both shall live, I forgive you, Mother.

Barbara Kingsolver

If the Lord hasn't got a boyfriend lined up for me to marry, that's his business.

Barbara Kingsolver

Hunger of the body is altogether different from the shallow, daily hunger of the belly. Those who have known this kind of hunger cannot entirely love, ever again, those who have not.

Barbara Kingsolver

Move on. Walk forward into the light.

Barbara Kingsolver

Sugar, it's no parade but you'll get down the street one way or another, so you'd just as well throw your shoulders back and pick up the pace.

Barbara Kingsolver

I’ve seen how you can’t learn anything when you’re trying to look like the smartest person in the room.

Barbara Kingsolver

Every life is different because you passed this way and touched history.

Barbara Kingsolver

Don’t try to make life a mathematics problem with yourself in the center and everything coming out equal. When you’re good, bad things can still happen. And if you’re bad, you can still be lucky.

Barbara Kingsolver

To live is to be marked. To live is to change, to acquire the words of a story, and that is the only celebration we mortals really know.

Barbara Kingsolver

On the day I swore to uphold the Hippocratic oath, the small hairs on the back of my neck stood up as I waited for lightning to strike. Who was I, vowing calmly among all these necktied young men to steal life out of nature's jaws, every old time we ...

Barbara Kingsolver

A territory is only possessed for a moment in time.

Barbara Kingsolver

...I stir in bed and the memories rise out of me like a buzz of flies from a carcass. I crave to be rid of them...

Barbara Kingsolver

You see mother, you had no life of your own. They have no idea. One has only a life of one's own.

Barbara Kingsolver

It lasted just a moment, whatever that is. One held breath? An ant's afternoon? It was brief, I can promise that much, for although it's been many years now since my children ruled my life, a mother recalls the measure of the silences.

Barbara Kingsolver

Author Bio

  • NameBarbara Kingsolver
  • DescriptionAmerican author, poet and essayist
  • BornApril 8, 1955
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionNovelist; Poet
  • WorksThe Poisonwood Bible; Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year Of Food Life
  • AwardsNational Humanities Medal