Quotes from Barbara Kingsolver

The notebook from the tobacco stand was the beginning of hope: a prisoner's plan for escape. Its empty pages would be the book of everything, miraculous and unending like the sea at night, a heartbeat that never stops. Salomé for her part was not worried about running out of books, only of having her clothes go out of fashion.

Hope involves giving a great deal of yourself away.

Can one who hates right govern?" Job 34:13

So if it's not this exact prophet of self-indulgence we're looking to for reassurance, it will be some other liar who's good at distracting us from the truth.

Well, why were they dumb enough to vote for Leah anyway, is what I asked Nelson. If they knew it was going to get Tata Kuvudundu so riled up? Nelson said some of them that voted for her were put out with Tata Ndu, and some were put out with Father, so everybody ended up getting what they didn't want, and now had to go along with it. Nobody even cares that much one way or another about Leah, is what Nelson said. Oh, well, I told him. That is what we call Democracy.

I envied them with an intensity near to love, and near to rage.

Corn syrup and added fats have been outed as major ingredients in fast food, but they hide out in packaged foods too, even presumed-innocent ones like crackers.

This is my test: I imagine them back there in the moonlight with the ground all around us boiling with ants. Now, which one, the crooked walker, or the darling perfection? I know how they would choose. Any man who admires my body now is a traitor to the previous Adah. So there you are.

Every quiet step is thunder to beetle life underfoot.

What a revelation, that I could carry my own parcel like any woman here!

They said it was to be a revolutionary house, free of class struggle, no servants' rooms because they didn't believe in laundry maids or cooks. Nobody does, really. Why should they? Only in having clean clothes, clean floors, and enchiladas tapatias.

If big Daddy-O was going to blow his stack over a witch doctor, here's one cat that wasn't going to miss it.

At age five I raised my good left hand in Sunday school and used a month's ration of words to point out this problem to Miss Betty Nagy. Getting born within earshot of a preacher, I reasoned, is entirely up to chance. Would Our Lord be such a hit-or-miss kind of Saviour as that? Would he really condemn some children to eternal suffering just for the accident of a heathen birth, and reward others for a privilege they did nothing to earn?

A blown brain will reach for any sideshow to dodge the main event.

the two of us singing "You're Still

They wanted payback. I thought about what Rose said, wanting to see the rest of us hurt, because she was hurting. You have to wonder how much of the whole world's turning is fueled by that very fire.

Your people will appreciate you all the same. On the other hand, if you poundcake someone or push them too far in the shame or shock direction, you will run into their people at Hardee's or the Dollar General parking lot, in all probability within the day.

felt the kindliness of the moss, which is all over everywhere once you get out of the made world. God's flooring. All the kinds, pillowy, pin-cushiony, shag carpet. Gray sticks of moss with red heads like matchsticks.

Schoolteacher pay is for the most part in the toilet. I gather this is common knowledge, but I had no idea, the day Miss Barks said, So long sucker, I'm chasing the big bucks now. Schoolteacher! I've had friends in places high and low since then, and some of the best were people that taught school. The ones that showed up for me. Outside of school hours they were delivery drivers

when I looked at Anatole's wrinkled brown knuckles and pinkish palms, I pictured hands like those digging diamonds out of the Congo dirt and got to thinking, Gee, does Marilyn Monroe even know where they come from?

The body is the original asshole, it can put you on detention away from all pleasures, but still makes you write out the list of its needs, one hundred times. I will piss and shit. I will go hungry.

Scientific laws are not the property of a man. They exist outside of us.

quoting Díaz: "Only in her home, like a butterfly in a glass jar, can woman progress to her highest level of decency.

Damned thing, self-consciousness, like a pitiful stray dog tagging you down the road—so hard to shake off. So easy to get back.