Quotes by Barbara Kingsolver

Few people know so clearly what they want. Most people cant even think what to hope for when they throw a penny in a fountain.

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. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof.

Peoples dreams are made out of what they do all day. The same way a dog that runs after rabbits will dream of rabbits. Its what you do that makes your soul, not the other way around.

Empathy is really the opposite of spiritual meanness. Its the capacity to understand that every war is both won and lost. And that someone elses pain is as meaningful as your own.

What you lose in blindness is the space around you, the place where you are, and without that you might not exist. You could be nowhere at all.

My morning begins with trying not to get up before the sun rises. But when I do, its because my head is too full of words, and I just need to get to my desk and start dumping them into a file. I always wake with sentences pouring into my head.

The older I get, the more I appreciate my rural childhood. I spent a lot of time outdoors, unsupervised, which is a blessing.

Readers of fiction read, I think, for a deeper embrace of the world, of reality. And thats brave. I never get over being thankful for that - for the courage of my readers.

Memory is a complicated thing, a relative to truth, but not its twin.

Pain reaches the heart with electrical speed, but truth moves to the heart as slowly as a glacier.

It takes some courage to write fiction about politically controversial topics. The dread is youll be labeled a political writer.

You always need that spark of imagination. Sometimes Im midway through a book before it happens. However, I dont wait for the muse to descend, I sit down every day and I work when Im not delivering lambs on the farm.

Wars and elections are both too big and too small to matter in the long run. The daily work - that goes on, it adds up.

“Time cures you first, and then it kills you.”

“A territory is only possessed for a moment in time.”

“In Kilanga, people knew nothing of things they might have had - a Frigidaire? a washer-dryer combination? Really, theyd sooner imagine a tree that could pull up its feet and go bake bread. It didnt occur to them to feel sorry for themselves.”

“Science doesnt tell us what we should do. It only tells us what is.”

“Awareness is everything. Hallie once pointed out to me that people worry a lot more about the eternity *after* their deaths than the eternity that happened before they were born. But its the same amount of infinity, rolling out in all directions from where we stand.”

“For scientists, reality is not optional.”

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