Barbara Kingsolver Quotes

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Barbara Kingsolver

Profession : Novelist

Birth : April 8, 1955

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

Barbara Kingsolver

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

Barbara Kingsolver

I used to think religion was just more of the same thing. Dump responsibility on the big guy. Now I see an importance in that. It's a relief to accept that not everything is under your control.

Barbara Kingsolver

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.

Barbara Kingsolver

Small change, small wonders - these are the currency of my endurance and ultimately of my life.

Barbara Kingsolver

Good fiction creates empathy. A novel takes you somewhere and asks you to look through the eyes of another person, to live another life.

Barbara Kingsolver

The truth needs so little rehearsal.

Barbara Kingsolver

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

Barbara Kingsolver

Sometimes the strength of motherhood is greater than natural laws.

Barbara Kingsolver

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

Barbara Kingsolver

Stop a minute, right where you are. Relax your shoulders, shake your head and spine like a dog shaking off cold water. Tell that imperious voice in your head to be still.

Barbara Kingsolver

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

Barbara Kingsolver

Few people know so clearly what they want. Most people can't even think what to hope for when they throw a penny in a fountain.

Barbara Kingsolver

It seems very safe to me to be surrounded by green growing things and water.

Barbara Kingsolver

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

Barbara Kingsolver

It kills you to see them grow up. But I guess it would kill you quicker if they didn't.

Barbara Kingsolver

It's surprising how much memory is built around things unnoticed at the time.

Barbara Kingsolver

For me, writing time has always been precious, something I wait for and am eager for and make the best use of. That's probably why I get up so early and have writing time in the quiet dawn hours, when no one needs me.

Barbara Kingsolver

I'm not pretending to be ingenuous; I know what I'm doing.

Barbara Kingsolver

Fiction and essays can create empathy for the theoretical stranger.

Barbara Kingsolver