Quotes from Barbara Kingsolver

So I am the one who quietly takes stock, I suppose. Believing in all things equally. Believing fundamentally in the right of a plant or a virus to rule the earth. Mother says I have no heart for my own kind. She doesn't know. I have too much. I know what we have done, and what we deserve.

Autumn darkness had already blinded the dining room windows, an effect that dispirited him, no matter how many autumns he lived or how predictably the light receded.

We felt tired to our bones but anointed by life in a durable, companionable way, for at least the present moment. We the living take every step in tandem with death, naught but the sap that feeds the tree of heaven, whether we can see that or not. We bear it by the grace of friendship, good mels, and if we need them, talking turkey heads.

My "Kentucky NCAA Champions" shirt was by now so bloodstained, you would think I had worn it to a North Carolina game. Also, I had feathers sticking to my hair.

and do not for the love of the Lord say you're laying down if you mean lying down.

At its heart, a genuine food culture is an affinity between people and the land that feeds them. Step one, probably, is to live on the land that feeds them, or at least on the same continent, ideally the same region. Step two is to be able to countenance the ideas of food and dirt in the same sentence, and three is to start poking into one's supply chain to learn where things are coming from.

When I got on the line again the operator was asking for more coins, so I dropped them in. Mama and I listened to the weird bonging song and didn't say anything to each other for a little bit. 'I just lost somebody I was in love with,' I finally told her. 'I just told him goodbye, and I'm never going to see him again.

Finally, cooking is good citizenship. It's the only way to get serious about putting locally raised foods into your diet, which keeps farmlands healthy and grocery money in the neighborhood.

She sounded like a man, with that deep voice smokers get as their prize for their hundred millionth pack.

Arterial-plaque specials that save minutes now can cost years, later on.

She never says gracias because life is made of survival not grace, she says, and servants are paid to bring what they're asked.

Storm in a shot glass type of thing. And Angus was the opposite. A whole ocean, dark and chill.

Four demons spawned by four different starving hearts.

People find more ways to shut up their monsters than a Bible has verses.

The women that loomed large in my life were all getting small.

A kid is a terrible thing to be, in charge of nothing.

a good story doesn't just copy life, it pushes back on it

Many other raw food products--notably poultry from CAFOs--typically carry a much higher threat to human health in terms of pathogen load, and yet the government trusts us to render it safe in our own humble kitchens. But it's easy to see how impossibly strict milk rules might gratify industry lobbyists, by eliminating competition from family producers.

It's football. Take that out of high school, it's like church with no Jesus. Who would even go?

Engineered genes don't play by the rules that have organized life for three billion years (or, if you prefer, 4,004). And in this case, winning means loser takes all.

It's terrible to lose somebody, I said, I mean, I don't know firsthand, but I can imagine it must be. But it's also true that some people never have anybody to lose, and I think that's got to be so much worse.

I realized that I had come to my own terms with the desert, but my soul was thirsty.

Small change, small wonders—these are the currency of my endurance and ultimately of my life. It's a workable economy.

I didn't wish to be comforted. "You can't replace people you love with other people," I said. "They're not like old shoes or something." "No. But you can trust that you're not going to run out of people to love.