Quotes from Barbara Kingsolver

No reporter worth his buttons will let the facts intrude on a good story.

I personally am inclined to approach [housework] the way governments treat dissent: ignore it until it revolts.

Once you start cooking, one thing leads to another. A new recipe is as exciting as a blind date. A new ingredient, heaven help me, is an intoxicating affair.

The truth needs so little rehearsal.

Hope is a renewable option: If you run out of it at the end of the day, you get to start over in the morning.

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

As a biologist, I can't think of myself as anything but an animal among animals and plant.

I never think that anything I'm writing is bluntly political in any way. I'm not going for commentary.

The power is in the balance: we are our injuries, as much as we are our successes.

Prayer had always struck me as more or less a glorified attempt at a business transaction.

...nothing momentous comes in this world unless it comes on the shoulders of kindness.

There are some who'd hardly lift a finger for kindness, but they would haul up a load of rock to dump on some soul they think's been too lucky.

At home, growing up, we weren't really poor. We had everything we needed, we just didn't have what we wanted.

There's always a part of your nation's history that you haven't been told that... has a powerful impact on how you yourself may behave and may believe.

In the places that call me out, I know I'll recover my wordless childhood trust in the largeness of life and its willingness to take me in.

Motherhood is so sentimentalised and romanticised in our culture. It's practically against the law to say there are moments in the day when you hate your children. Everyone actually has those moments.

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

I grew up aware of all the people I depended on and who depended on me.

If you want sweet dreams, you've got to live a sweet life.

Thanks for this day, for all birds safe in their nests, for whatever this is, for life.

In a world as wrong as this one, all we can do is make things as right as we can.

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.

The important thing isn't the house. It's the ability to make it. You carry that in your brains and in your hands, wherever you go... It's one thing to carry your life wherever you go. Another thing to always go looking for it somewhere else.

When people are frightened about going hungry and paying their mortgages, a scarcity model begins to prevail; they fear someone else will get their piece of the pie.