Quotes from 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.

Terms like that, "Humane Society," are devised with people like me in mind, who don't care to dwell on what happens to the innocent.

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

Why is it that only girls stand on the sides of their feet? As if they're afraid to plant themselves?

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

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.

There is no point treating a depressed person as though she were just feeling sad, saying, 'There now, hang on, you'll get over it.' Sadness is more or less like a head cold- with patience, it passes. Depression is like cancer.

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.

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.

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

Codi: Gives you the willies, doesn't it? The thought of raising kids in a place where the front yard ends in a two-hundred-foot drop? [referring to cliff dwellings] Loyd: No worse than raising up kids where the front yard ends in a freeway.

I can count all the ways in which being a mother has enriched my understanding of the world, of character, my sense of the future and my attachment to it. I can't imagine what kind of writer I'd be if I didn't have my kids.

I think the most interesting parts of human experience might be the sparks that come from that sort of chipping flint of cultures rubbing against each other. And living on the border between Mexico and the U.S. for so many years gave me a lot of insight into that.

Why does a person even get up in the morning? You have breakfast, you floss your teeth so you'll have healthy gums in your old age, and then you get in your car and drive down I-10 and die. Life is so stupid I can't stand it.

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.

I suppose that is my central obsession. What we owe to society, what we owe to ourselves.

I've always seen the world through the eyes of a scientist. I love the predictable outcomes that science gives us, the control over the world that that can render.

What keeps you going isn't some fine destination but just the road you're on, and the fact that you know how to drive.

The very least you can do in your life is 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.

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.

There is no point treating a depressed person as though she were just feeling sad, saying, 'There now, hang on, you'll get over it.' Sadness is more or less like a head cold- with patience, it passes. Depression is like cancer.

The friend who holds your hand and says the wrong thing is made of dearer stuff than the one who stays away.

She kept swimming out into life because she hadn't yet found a rock to stand on.

Everything you're sure is right can be wrong in another place.