Quotes from Barbara Kingsolver

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.

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.

Arguments could fill a marriage like water, running through everything, always, with no taste or color but lots of noise.

Maybe he's been in Africa so long he has forgotten that we Christians have our own system of marriage, and it is called Monotony.

The loudest sound on earth, she thought, is a man with nothing to do.

I have seen women looking at jewelry ads with a misty eye and one hand resting on the heart, and I only know what they're feeling because that's how I read the seed catalogs in January.

I could never work out whether we were to view religion as a life-insurance policy or a life sentence.

The daily work - that goes on, it adds up.

Nonfiction requires enormous discipline. You construct the terms of your story, and then you stick to them.

Sleeping alone seemed unnatural to me, and pitiful, something done in hospitals or when you're contagious.

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.

Don't wait for the muse. She has a lousy work ethic. Writers just write.

there are people who read my work and accuse me of being political! As far as I'm concerned that's like accusing a dog of having a bark!

In the day-to-day, farm work is stress relief for me. At the end of the day, I love having this other career - my anti-job - that keeps me in shape and gives me control over a vegetal domain.

I do my best work if I think about what it is I have to offer.

Children can be your heartache. But that doesn't matter, you have to go on and have them . . . it works out.

If you're writing, you're a writer. If you're talking about it or thinking about it, I'm not so sure. Writing is ninety-eight percent work and two percent magic.

A writer's occupational hazard: I think of eavesdropping as minding my business.

Southern Appalachians have been ridiculed since the country began. In fiction, they're usually depicted in a cartoonish manner. The region is poor, and very suspicious of outsiders, so there's a sort of 'us versus them' situation. They're easy to poke fun at.

Every betrayal contains a perfect moment, a coin stamped heads or tails with salvation on the other side.

Cooking is 80 percent confidence, a skill best acquired starting from when the apron strings wrap around you twice.

Readers of fiction read, I think, for a deeper embrace of the world, of reality. And that's brave. I never get over being thankful for that - for the courage of my readers.

I live in a rural part of Virginia surrounded by farms and farmers.

School is about two parts ABCs to fifty parts Where Do I Stand in the Great Pecking Order of Humankind.