Quotes from Barbara Kingsolver

We seem to be built with a faulty gauge for moderation.

Nobody truly decided for themselves. There was too much information. What they actually did was scope around, decide who was looking out for their clan, and sign on for the memos on a wide array of topics.

Every mud puddle is surrounded by a prayer group of small blue butterflies.

In our state—no kidding—they are called Standards of Learning, or "SOLs." (I don't think anyone intended the joke.)

Physical pleasure was such a convincing illusion, and sex, the ultimate charade of safety.

He] has about one idea in a year, and gets so worn out from it he has to go lie down.

In Lee County they say you have to look hard for a face you've not seen before, which surely was true for Mom, who'd directed anybody that could walk to where the Solo cups are kept on Aisle 19.

They both went quiet, imagining a river of irises. Thatcher lay watching the sky through the leaves, white clouds skipping across small lenses of light. Here was a world, where he'd asked for nothing. He would escape with his life before the dust had settled on the collapse of his falling house.

He stamped me with a belief in justice, then drenched me in culpability, and I wouldn't wish such torment even on a mosquito.

start trusting the ride at some point, because life was not a total & complete dumpster fire, which she was wrong about.

you've not seen the far end of lonely.

We [women] have earned the right to forget about stupefying household busywork. But kitchens where food is cooked and eaten - those were really a good idea. We threw that baby out with the bathwater.

Tiptoe past the dogs of the apocalypse asleep in the shade of your future. Pay at the window. You'll be surprised: you can pass off hope like a bad check. You still have time, that's the thing. To make it good.

one thought in it as regards childhood. For any kid that gets that as an option: take that sweet thing and run with it. Hide. Love it so hard. Because it's going to fucking leave you and not come back.

Their tail feathers ticked like weeds and one of them crowed nonstop, as if impatient. But impatience implies consciousness of time and a chicken is existential. I know that much about birds.

Her small head crowned with its great white braid nodded a little. No hugs or confessions of love. We were all a little stiff, I understood that. Family constellations are fixed things. They don't change just because you've learned the names of the stars.

To the Congolese (including Anatole himself, he confessed) it seems odd that if one man gets fifty votes and the other gets forty-nine, the first one wins altogether and the second one plumb loses. That means almost half the people will be unhappy, and according to Anatole, in a village that's left halfway unhappy you haven't heard the end of it. There is sure to be trouble somewhere down the line.

we've got the whole rest of the world over there, other than people, which are only one thing.

I've about decided that's the main thing that separates happy people from the other people: the feeling that you're a practical item, with a use, like a sweater or a socket wrench.

I told Dr. Andresen I was going for it, and she did the rare thing of smiling with her whole mouth. I think you are unlikely to obliterate, she said. And I said, You watch. (a conversation with his therapist)

Sometimes I tell her: Mommy Mommy. I just say that. Father isn't listening so I can say it. Her real name is Mother and Misrus Price but her secret name to me is Mommy Mommy. He went away on the airplane and I said, "Mama, I hope he never comes back." We cried then.

He thinks 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.

today and I thought of those movies in which a town is wiped clean of its

AS LONG AS I KEPT MOVING, my grief streamed out behind me like a swimmer's long hair in water. I knew the weight was there but it didn't touch me. Only when I stopped did the slick, dark stuff of it come floating around my face, catching my arms and throat till I began to drown.