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At Some Point In My Life I'd Honestly Hoped Love Would Rescue Me From The Cold, Drafty Castle I Lived In. But At Another Point, Much Earlier I Think, I'd Quietly Begun To Hope For Nothing At All In The Way Of Love, So As Not To Be Disappointed. It Works. It Gets To Be A Habit.

-Barbara Kingsolver

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At Some Point In

Barbara Kingsolver

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At Some Point In My Life I'd Honestly Hoped Love Would Rescue Me From The Cold, Drafty Castle I Lived In. But At Another Point, Much Earlier I Think, I'd Quietly Begun To Hope For Nothing At All In The Way Of Love, So As Not To Be Disappointed. It Works. It Gets To Be A Habit.

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Poetry Feels Like A Country I Visit Without A Passport, Where I Look Around Furtively, Grab Hold Of Something Precious, And Try To Smuggle It Back Across The Border. Any Poem I Get Written Down Feels Like Contraband To Me.

Everything You're Sure Is Right Can Be Wrong In Another Place.

Tall And Straight I May Appear, But I Will Always Be Ada Inside. A Crooked Little Person Trying To Tell The Truth. The Power Is In The Balance: We Are Our Injuries, As Much As We Are Our Successes

The First Steps Toward Stewardship Are Awareness, Appreciation, And The Selfish Desire To Have The Things Around For Our Kids To See. Presumably The Unselfish Motives Will Follow As We Wise Up.

The Friend Who Holds Your Hand And Says The Wrong Thing Is Made Of Dearer Stuff Than The One Who Stays Away.

I Think That When People Read Fiction, They're Really Reading For Wisdom. I Am. That's What Most Of Us Really Love. If We Read A Novel That Rocks Our World, It's Because There's Something In It That We Didn't Know Already. Not Just Information But Really Wisdom - Sort Of What To Do With Our Information. And Wisdom Comes From Experience.

Over The Last Decade Our Country Has Lost An Average Of 300 Farms A Week. Large Or Small, Each Of Those Was The Lifes Work Of A Real Person Or Family, People Who Built Their Lives Around A Promise And Watched It Break.

My Morning Begins With Trying Not To Get Up Before The Sun Rises. But When I Do, It's Because My Head Is Too Full Of Words, And I Just Need To Get To My Desk And Start Dumping Them Into A File. I Always Wake With Sentences Pouring Into My Head.

I Live In Southern Appalachia, So I'm Surrounded By People Who Work Very Hard For Barely A Living Wage. It's Particularly Painful That People Are Working The Farms Their Parents And Grandparents Worked But Aren't Living Nearly As Well.

The Substance Of Grief Is Not Imaginary. It's As Real As Rope Or The Absence Of Air, And Like Both Those Things, It Can Kill.

My Way Of Finding A Place In This World Is To Write One.

Come To Think Of It, Just About Every Tool Was Shaped Like Either A Weenie Or A Pistol, Depending On Your Point Of View.

No Reporter Worth His Buttons Will Let The Facts Intrude On A Good Story.

You Never Knew Which Split Second Might Be The Zigzag Bolt Dividing All That Went Before From The Everything That Comes Next.

There Was A Roaring In My Ears And I Lost Track Of What They Were Saying. I Believe It Was The Physical Manifestation Of Unbearable Grief.

High Fashion Has The Shelf Life Of Potato Salad. And When Past Its Prime, It Is Similarly Deadly.

Growing Food Was The First Activity That Gave Us Enough Prosperity To Stay In One Place, Form Complex Social Groups, Tell Our Stories, And Build Our Cities.

Oh, That River Of Wishes, The Slippery Crocodile Dream Of It, How It Might Have Carried My Body Down Through All The Glittering Sand Bars To The Sea.

He Lifts Her Breasts, Which Fit Perfectly Into His Hands, Though He Knows This Is No Promise That He Gets To Keep Them. A Million Things You Can't Have Will Fit In A Human Hand.

That Was When We Smelled The Rain. It Was So Strong It Seemed Like More Than Just A Smell. When We Stretched Out Our Hands We Could Practically Feel It Rising Up From The Ground. I Don’t Know How A Person Could Ever Describe That Scent.

Literature Duplicates The Experience Of Living In A Way That Nothing Else Can, Drawing You So Fully Into Another Life That You Temporarily Forget You Have One Of Your Own. That Is Why You Read It, And Might Even Sit Up In Bed Till Early Dawn, Throwing Your Whole Tomorrow Out Of Whack, Simply To Find Out What Happens To Some People Who, You Know Perfectly Well, Are Made Up.

Life Proceeds, It Enrages. The Untouched Ones Spend Their Luck Without A Thought, Believing They Deserve It.

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.

It's A Funny Thing: People Often Ask How I Discipline Myself To Write. I Can't Begin To Understand The Question. For Me, The Discipline Is Turning Off The Computer And Leaving My Desk To Do Something Else.

Of The Two Hundred Bones In The Human Body, More Than A Quarter Are In The Foot. It Is A More Complicated Instrument Than An Automobile Transmission, And It Is Treated With Far Less Consideration.

I Could Never Work Out Whether We Were To View Religion As A Life-insurance Policy Or A Life Sentence.

Everyone Should Get Dirt On His Hands Each Day. Doctors, Intellectuals. Politicians, Most Of All. How Can We Presume To Uplift The Life Of The Working Man, If We Don't Respect His Work?

In Exchange For His First Taste Of Powdered Milk, Pascal Showed Me A Tree We Could Climb To Find A Bird's Nest. After We Handled And Examined The Pink-skinned Baby Birds, He Popped One Of Them Into His Mouth Like A Jujube. It Seemed To Please Him A Lot. He Offered A Baby Bird To Me, Pantomiming That I Should Eat It. I Understood Perfectly Well What He Meant, But I Refused. He Did Not Seem Disappointed To Have To Eat The Whole Brood Himself.

Shoes Would Interfere With Her Conversation, For She Constantly Addresses The Ground Under Her Feet. Asking Forgiveness. Owning, Disowning, Recanting, Recharting A Hateful Course Of Events To Make Sense Of Her Complicity. We All Are, I Suppose. Trying To Invent Our Version Of The Story. All Human Odes Are Essentially One, "my Life; What I Stole From History, And How I Live With It.

How Pointless Life Could Be, What A Foolish Business Of Inventing Things To Love, Just So You Could Dread Losing Them.

Eaters Must Understand, How We Eat Determines How The World Is Used.

I’ve Seen How You Can’t Learn Anything When You’re Trying To Look Like The Smartest Person In The Room.

There's A Graveyard In Northern France Where All The Dead Boys From D-day Are Buried. The White Crosses Reach From One Horizon To The Other. I Remember Looking It Over And Thinking It Was A Forest Of Graves. But The Rows Were Like This, Dizzying, Diagonal, Perfectly Straight, So After All It Wasn't A Forest But An Orchard Of Graves. Nothing To Do With Nature, Unless You Count Human Nature.

People Ask Without Wanting To Know.

You Can’t Replace People You Love With Other People…but You Can Trust That You’re Not Going To Run Out Of People To Love.

Forgive Me, O Heavenly Father, According To The Multitude Of Thy Mercies. I Have Lusted In My Heart To Break A Man's Skull And Scatter The Stench Of His Brains Across Several People's Back Yards.

We're Animals. We're Born Like Every Other Mammal And We Live Our Whole Lives Around Disguised Animal Thoughts.

When I Want To Take God At His Word Exactly, I Take A Peep Out The Window At His Creation. Because That, Darling, He Makes Fresh For Us Everyday.

It Feels Strange To Me To Be Living In A Box, Hiding From The Steadying Influence Of The Moon; Wearing The Hide Of A Cow, Which Is Supposed To Be Dyed To Match God-knows-what, On My Feet; Making Promises Over The Telephone About Things I Will Do At A Precise Hour Next Year.

The Changes We Dread Most May Contain Our Salvation.

People Read Books To Escape The Uncertainties Of Life.

Uncertainty Of Life

I Don't Bring Expectations To Any Of My Books. I Don't Tell People What To Do. I Want To Invite Them In.

The Power Is In The Balance: We Are Our Injuries, As Much As We Are Our Successes.

Sleeping Alone Seemed Unnatural To Me, And Pitiful, Something Done In Hospitals Or When You're Contagious.

The Writing Has Been On The Wall For Some Years Now, But We Are A Nation Illiterate In The Language Of The Wall. The Writing Just Gets Bigger. Something Will Eventually Bring Down The Charming, Infuriating Naïveté Of Americans That Allows Us Our Blithe Consumption And Cheerful Ignorance Of The Secret Ugliness That Bring Us Whatever We Want.

Our House Is Like An Empty Cigarette Packet, Lying Around Reminding You What's Not In It.

In Kilanga, People Knew Nothing Of Things They Might Have Had - A Frigidaire? A Washer-dryer Combination? Really, They'd Sooner Imagine A Tree That Could Pull Up Its Feet And Go Bake Bread. It Didn't Occur To Them To Feel Sorry For Themselves.

...our Best Task Is To Move Forward Without Insisting Others Slide Backward.

Once The Rains Abated, My Father's Garden Thrived In The Heat Like An Unleashed Temper.

Culture Is A Slingshot Moved By The Force Of Its Past

The Death Of Something Living Is The Price Of Our Own Survival, And We Pay It Again And Again. We Have No Choice. It Is The One Solemn Promise Every Life On Earth Is Born And Bound To Keep.

Height Isn't Something You Can Have And Just Let Be, Like Nice Teeth Or Naturally Curly Hair. People Have This Idea You Have To Put It To Use, Playing Basketball, For Example, Or Observing The Weather Up There. If You Are A Girl, They Feel A Particular Need To Point Your Height Out To You, As If You Might Not Have Noticed.

For Lou Ann, Life Itself Was A Life-threatening Enterprise.

God, Why Does A Mortal Man Have Children? It Is Senseless To Love Anything This Much.

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.

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. So I Just Didn't Stop.

A Novel Can Educate To Some Extent, But First A Novel Has To Entertain. That's The Contract With The Reader: You Give Me Ten Hours And I'll Give You A Reason To Turn Every Page. I Have A Commitment To Accessibility. I Believe In Plot. I Want An English Professor To Understand The Symbolism While At The Same Time I Want The People I Grew Up With - Who May Not Often Read Anything But The Sears Catalog - To Read My Books.

Misunderstanding Is My Cornerstone. It's Everyone's, Come To Think Of It. Illusions Mistaken For Truth Are The Pavement Under Our Feet.

I Had Decided Early On That If I Couldn’t Dress Elegant, I’d Dress Memorable.

It's A Great Freedom To Give Up On Love, And Get On With Everything Else.

Giving Up On Love

The Thing Is, It's My Own Fault. I Just Can't Put Up With A Person That Won't Go Out Of His Way For Me. And That's What A Man Is. Somebody That Won't Go Out Of His Way For You. I Bet It Says That In The Dictionary.

I'm Never Going To Tell The Reader What To Believe; I'm Going To Examine These Characters That Believe Different Ways, And Examine Their Motives.

When You're Given A Brilliant Child You Polish Her And Let Her Shine. Pigs In Heaven

I Can Think Of No Honorable Answer. Why Must Some Of Us Deliberate Between Brands Of Toothpaste, While Others Deliberate Between Damp Dirt And Bone Dust To Quiet The Fire Of An Empty Stomach Lining? There Is Nothing About The United States I Can Really Explain To This Child Of Another World.

Recall That Whatever Lofty Things You Might Accomplish Today, You Will Do Them Only Because You First Ate Something That Grew Out Of The Dirt.

How Is It Right To Slip Free Of An Old Skin And Walk Away From The Scene Of The Crime? We Came, We Saw, We Took Away And We Left Behind, We Must Be Allowed Our Anguish And Our Regrets.

The Artist Deals With What Cannot Be Said In Words. The Novelist Says In Words What Cannot Be Said In Words.

If Someone Does Learn About The World From Reading A Novel Of Mine, That Makes Me Very Happy. It's Probably Not What Brings Me Into The Novel In The First Place - I Usually Am Pulled In By Some Big Question About The World And Human Nature That I'm Not Going To Resolve In The Course Of The Novel. But I'm Very Devoted To Getting My Facts Straight.

Memory Is A Complicated Thing, A Relative To Truth, But Not Its Twin.

Our Childhood Had Passed Over Into History Overnight. The Transition Was Unnoticed By Anyone But Ourselves.

...nothing Momentous Comes In This World Unless It Comes On The Shoulders Of Kindness.

But The Last One: The Baby Who Trails Her Scent Like A Flag Of Surrender Through Your Life When There Will Be No More Coming After - Oh, That's Love By A Different Name. She Is The Babe You Hold In Your Arms For An Hour After She's Gone To Sleep. If You Put Her Down In The Crib, She Might Wake Up Changed And Fly Away. So Instead You Rock My The Window, Drinking The Light From Her Skin, Breathing Her Exhaled Dreams. Your Heart Bays To The Double Crescent Moons Of Closed Lashes On Her Cheeks. She's The One You Can't Put Down.

Quit Smoking, And Observe Posted Speed Limits. This Will Improve Your Odds Of Getting Old Enough To Be Wise.

It's As If Cats Live In A Seperate Universe That Takes Up The Same Space As Ours, But Is Full Of Facinating Things Like Mice Or Sparrows Or Special Tv Programs That We Can't See.

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.

Write A Nonfiction Book, And Be Prepared For The Legion Of Readers Who Are Going To Doubt Your Fact. But Write A Novel, And Get Ready For The World To Assume Every Word Is True.

If Every U.s. Citizen Ate Just One Meal A Week (any Meal) Composed Of Locally And Organically Raised Meats And Produce, We Would Reduce Our Country’s Oil Consumption By Over 1.1 Million Barrels Of Oil Every Week. That's Not Gallons, But Barrels. Small Changes In Buying Habits Can Make Big Differences. Becoming A Less Energy-dependent Nation May Just Need To Start With A Good Breakfast.

I Didn't Study Writing In School, I Studied Biology As An Undergraduate And Graduate Student. So I Think That I Write Fiction In The Scientific Way. I Love Invention, Obviously; I Love Creation Of Character. But I Do Feel Very Rooted In The Real World, Even In The Way That I Create Characters.

Memories Do Not Always Soften With Time; Some Grow Edges Like Knives.

I'm Widest Awake As A Writer Doing Something New, Engaged In A Process I'm Not Sure I Can Finish, Generating At The Edge Of My Powers. Some People Bungee Jump; I Write.

One Of The Very First Things I Figured Out About Life...is That It's Better To Be A Hopeful Person Than A Cynical, Grumpy One, Because You Have To Live In The Same World Either Way, And If You're Hopeful, You Have More Fun.

The Most Assiduous Task Of Parenting Is To Divine The Difference Between Boundaries And Bondage.

Like Kids Who Only Ever Get Socks For Christmas, But Still Believe With All Their Hearts In Santa.

It's The One Thing We Never Quite Get Over: That We Contain Our Own Future.

I Made It To The Childbearing Phase Without Tv Dependence, Then Looked Around And Thought, Well Gee, Why Start Now? Why Get A Pet Python On The Day You Decide To Raise Fuzzy Little Gerbils?

Scientific Illiteracy In Our Populations Is Leaving Too Many Of Us Unprepared To Discuss Or Understand Much Of The Damage We Are Wreaking On Our Atmosphere, Our Habitat, And Even The Food That Enters Our Mouths.

There's Always More To A Story Than A Body Can See From The Fenceline.

But We've All Ended Up Giving Body And Soul To Africa, One Way Or Another. Even Adah, Who's Becoming An Expert In Tropical Epidemiology And Strange New Viruses. Each Of Us Got Our Heart Buried In Six Feet Of African Dirt; We Are All Co-conspirators Here. I Mean, All Of Us, Not Just My Family. So What Do You Do Now? You Get To Find Your Own Way To Dig Out A Heart And Shake It Off And Hold It Up To The Light Again.

A Breeze Shook Rain Out Of New Leaves Onto Their Hair, But In Their Pursuit Of Eternity They Never Noticed The Chill.

The Reason Most People Have Kids Is Because They Get Pregnant.

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 Average Food Item On A U.s. Grocery Shelf Has Traveled Farther Than Most Families Go On Their Annual Vacations.

Vengeance Does Not Subtract Any Numbers From The Equation Of Murder; It Only Adds Them.

I Know I'm A Rare Person, A Trained Scientist Who Writes Fiction, Because So Few Contemporary Novelists Engage With Science.

A Flower Is A Plant's Way Of Making Love.

But Anatole Said Suddenly, 'don't Expect God's Protection In Places Beyond God's Dominion. It Will Only Make You Feel Punished. I'm Warning You. When Things Go Bad, You Will Blame Yourself.' 'what Are You Telling Me?' 'i Am Telling You What I'm Telling You. Don't Try To Make Life A Mathematics Problem With Yourself In The Center And Everything Coming Out Equal. When You Are Good, Bad Things Can Still Happen. And If You Are Bad, You Can Still Be Lucky.

He Was Getting That Look He Gets, Oh Boy, Like Here Comes Moses Tromping Down Off Of Mount Syanide With Ten Fresh Ways To Wreck Your Life.

He Was My Father. I Own Half His Genes, And All Of His History. Believe This: The Mistakes Are Part Of The Story. I Am Born Of A Man Who Believed He Could Tell Nothing But The Truth, While He Set Down For All Time The Poisonwood Bible.

The Gods You Do Not Pay Are The Ones That Can Curse You Best.

Sugar, It's No Parade But You'll Get Down The Street One Way Or Another, So You'd Just As Well Throw Your Shoulders Back And Pick Up The Pace.

Arguments Could Fill A Marriage Like Water, Running Through Everything, Always, With No Taste Or Color But Lots Of Noise.

Some Of Us Know How We Came By Our Fortune And Some Of Us Don't; But We Wear It All The Same

Like Daniel She Enteres The Lions' Den, But Lacking Daniel's Pure And Unblemished Soul, Ada Is Spiced With The Flavors Of Vice That Make For A Tasty Meal. Pure And Unblemished Souls Must Taste Very Bland, With An Aftertaste Of Bitterness.

Don't Try To Figure Out What Other People Want To Hear From You; Figure Out What You Have To Say.

We Came From Bethlehem, Georgia Bearing Betty Crocker Cake Mixes Into The Jungle.

You Know Reviewers, They Are The Wind In Their Own Sails.

Does A Man Become A Revolutionary Out Of The Belief He's Entitled To Joy Rather Than Submission?

In The Long Run, Most Of Us Spend About Fifteen Minutes Total In The Entanglements Of Passion, And The Rest Of Our Days Looking Back On It, Humming The Tune.

When We Traded Homemaking For Careers, We Were Implicitly Promised Economic Independence And Worldly Influence. But A Devil Of A Bargain It Has Turned Out To Be In Terms Of Daily Life. We Gave Up The Aroma Of Warm Bread Rising, The Measured Pace Of Nurturing Routines, The Creative Task Of Molding Our Families' Tastes And Zest For Life; We Received In Exchange The Minivan And The Lunchable.

She Kept Swimming Out Into Life Because She Hadn't Yet Found A Rock To Stand On.

Those First Few Weeks Are An Unearthly Season. From The Outside You Remain So Ordinary, No One Can Tell From Looking That You Have Experienced An Earthquake Of The Soul. You've Been Torn Asunder, Invested With An Ancient, Incomprehensible Magic. It's The One Thing That We Never Quite Get Over: That We Contain Our Own Future.

He Needs To Go Rub His Soul Against Life.

My Life Is A Pitiful, Mechanical Thing Without A Past, Like A Little Wind-up Car, Ready To Run In Any Direction Someone Points Me.

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.

Hope Is A Renewable Option: If You Run Out Of It At The End Of The Day, You Get To Start Over In The Morning.

This Is How Moths Speak To Each Other. They Tell Their Love Across The Fields By Scent. There Is No Mouth, The Wrong Words Are Impossible, Either A Mate Is There Or He Is Not, And If So The Pair Will Find Each Other In The Dark.

Mother Could Go For One Year Without Food, But Not One Day Without Her Lip Sticks.

Will You Explain To Me Why People Encourage Delusional Behaviour In Children, And Medicate It In Adults?

I've Never Gotten Over High School, To The Extent That I'm Still A Little Surprised That My Friends Want To Hang Out With Me.

But Still, I’d Be Darned If I Was Going To Be One Of Those Americans Who Stomp Around Italy Barking Commands In Ever-louder English. I Was Going To Be One Of Those Americans Who Traversed Italy With My Forehead Knit In Concentration, Divining Wordsw From Their Latin Roots And Answering By Wedging French Cognates Into Italian Pronunciations Spliced Onto A Standard Spanish Verb Conjugation.

Quit Smoking In The Hope Of Growing Old. It Takes A Long Time To Write. People Go To Books For Wisdom And Older Authors Tend To Have More Of It.

You Can Curse The Dead Or Pray For Them, But Don't Expect Them To Do A Thing For You. They're Far Too Interested In Watching Us, To See What In Heaven's Name We Will Do Next.

It's Frightening When Things You Love Appear Suddenly Changed From What You Have Always Known.

Things You Love

The Arc Of History Is Longer Than Human Vision. It Bends. We Abolished Slavery, We Granted Universal Suffrage. We Have Done Hard Things Before. And Every Time It Took A Terrible Fight Between People Who Could Not Imagine Changing The Rules, And Those Who Said, 'we Already Did. We Have Made The World New.' The Hardest Part Will Be To Convince Yourself Of The Possibilities, And Hang On.

Organization Is The Religion Of The Single Parent.

Every Life Is Different Because You Passed This Way And Touched History.

Pain Reaches The Heart With Electrical Speed, But Truth Moves To The Heart As Slowly As A Glacier.

Science Doesn't Tell Us What We Should Do. It Only Tells Us What Is.

I Write Every Moment That Is Humanly Possible. I Write Every Day And Every Night. The Only Discipline I Lack Is The Discipline Is To Quit.

Libraries Are The One American Institution You Shouldn't Rip Off.

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.

Most People No Longer Believe That Buying Sneakers Made In Asian Sweatshops Is A Kindness To Those Child Laborers. Farming Is Similar. In Every Country On Earth, The Most Human Scenario For Farmers Is Likely To Be Feeding Those Who Live Nearby-if International Markets Would Allow Them To Do It. Food Transport Has Become A Bizarre And Profitable Economic Equation That's No Longer Really About Feeding Anyone ... If You Care About Farmers, Let The Potatoes Stay Home.

Lies Are Infinite In Number, And The Truth So Small And Singular.

A First Child Is Your Own Best Foot Forward, And How You Do Cheer Those Little Feet As They Strike Out. You Examine Every Turn Of Flesh For Precocity, And Crow It To The World. But The Last One: The Baby Who Trails Her Scent Like A Flag Of Surrender Through Your Life When There Will Be No More Coming After--oh, That' S Love By A Different Name.

We Tap Our Toes To Chaste Love Songs About The Silvery Moon Without Recognizing Them As Hymns To Copulation.

I Thought: This Is How Life Is, Ridiculous Beyond Comprehension.

The Arrogance Of The Able-bodied Is Staggering. Yes, Maybe We'd Like To Be Able To Get Places Quickly, And Carry Things In Both Hands But Only Because We Have To Keep Up With The Rest Of You ... We Would Rather Be Just Like Us, And Have That Be All Right.

The Novel Is Inherently A Political Instrument, Regardless Of Its Subject. It Invites You - More Than Invites You, Induces You - To Live Inside Another Person's Skin. It Creates Empathy. And That's The Antidote To Bigotry. The Novel Doesn't Just Tell You About Another Life, Which Is What A Newspaper Would Do. It Makes You Live Another Life, Inhabit Another Perspective. And That's Very Important.

The Most Important Part Of A Story Is The Piece Of It You Don't Know.

Close The Door. Write With No One Looking Over Your Shoulder. Don't Try To Figure Out What Other People Want To Hear From You; Figure Out What You Have To Say. It's The One And Only Thing You Have To Offer.

Once You Start Cooking, One Thing Leads To Another. A New Recipe Is As Exciting As A Blind Date. A New Ingredient, Heaven Help Me, Is An Intoxicating Affair.

Perhaps Growing Up Meant We Put Our Knives Away And Feigned Ignorance Of The Damage.

There Were Two Things About Mama. One Is She Always Expected The Best Out Of Me. And The Other Is That Then No Matter What I Did, Whatever I Came Home With, She Acted Like It Was The Moon I Had Just Hung Up In The Sky And Plugged In All The Stars. Like I Was That Good.

I Live In A Rural Part Of Virginia Surrounded By Farms And Farmers.

Hunger Of The Body Is Altogether Different From The Shallow, Daily Hunger Of The Belly. Those Who Have Known This Kind Of Hunger Cannot Entirely Love, Ever Again, Those Who Have Not.

Being A Novelist And Being A Mother Have Exactly Coincided In My Life: The Call From My Agent Saying That I Had A Contract For My First Novel - That Was On My Answering Phone Message When I Got Back From The Hospital With My First Child.

Sadness Is More Or Less Like A Head Cold - With Patience, It Passes. Depression Is Like Cancer.

For If There Is Any Single Thing That Everyone Hopes For Most Dearly, It Must Be This: That The Youngest Outlive The Oldest.

This Will Be Great Mam's Last Spring. Her Last June Apples. Her Last Fresh Roasting Ears From The Garden.

Be Careful What You Give Children, For Sooner Or Later You Are Sure To Get It Back.

A Writer's Occupational Hazard: I Think Of Eavesdropping As Minding My Business.

Feeling That Morality Has Nothing To Do With The Way You Use The Resources Of The World Is An Idea That Can't Persist Much Longer. If It Does, Then We Won't.

When Moral Superiority Combines With Billowing Ignorance, They Fill Up A Hot-air Balloon That's Awfully Hard Not To Poke.

How Strange To Read Of A Place In A Book, And Then Stand On It, Listen To The Birds Sing, And Spit On The Cobbles If You Want.

You Know What The Issue Is? Do You Want To Know? It's What These Guys Have Decided To Call America. They Have The Audacity To Say, 'there, You Sons Of Bitches, Don't Lay A Finger On It. That Is A Finished Product.'" "but Any Country Is Still In The Making. Always. That's Just History, People Have To See That.

I Considered Her My Ally, Because, Like Me, She Was Imperfect.

You Don't Think You'll Live Past It And You Don't Really. The Person You Were Is Gone. But The Half Of You That's Still Alive Wakes Up One Day And Takes Over Again.

Human Manners Are Wildly Inconsistent; Plenty Of People Have Said So. But This One Takes The Cake: The Manner In Which We're Allowed To Steal From Future Generations, While Commanding Them Not To Do That To Us, And Rolling Our Eyes At Anyone Who Is Tediously Pc Enough To Point That Out. The Conspicious Consumption Of Limited Resources Has Yet To Be Accepted Widely As A Spirtual Error, Or Even Bad Manners.

Let Me Claim That Africa And I Kept Company For A While And Then Parted Ways As If We Were Both Party To Relations With A Failed Outcome. Or Say I Was Afflicted With Africa Like A Bout Of A Rare Disease From Which I Have Not Managed A Full Recovery.

Fiction Is A Sort Of Inter-human Magic, Allowing You To Travel Into A Scene And Feel It Tingle On Your Skin.

I Look At My Four Boys, Who Are The Colors Of Silt, Loam, Dust, And Clay, An Infinite Palette For Children Of Their Own, And I Understand That Time Erases Whiteness Altogether.

The Very Least You Can Do In Your Life Is To 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.

Loose Lips Sink Ships.

Food Is The Rare Moral Arena In Which The Ethical Choice Is Generally The One More Likely To Make You Groan With Pleasure.

You Could Love Your Crazy People, Even Admire Them, Instead Of Resenting That They're Not Self-sufficient.

Literature Is One Of The Few Kinds Of Writing In The World That Does Not Tell You What To Buy, Want, See, Be, Or Believe. It's More Like Conversation, Raising New Questions And Inspiring You To Answer Them For Yourself.

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.

Wake Up Now, Look Alive, For Here Is A Day Off Work Just To Praise Creation: The Turkey, The Squash, And The Corn, These Things That Ate And Drank Sunshine, Grass, Mud, And Rain, And Then In The Shortening Days Laid Down Their Lives For Our Welfare And Onward Resolve. There's The Miracle For You, The Absolute Sacrifice That Still Holds Back Seed: A Germ Of Promise To Do The Whole Thing Again, Another Time. . . Thanksgiving Is Creation's Birthday Party. Praise Harvest, A Pause And Sigh On The Breath Of Immortality.

You Know Things Are Bad When A Woman Without Any Legs And Who Recently Lost Two Of Her Own Kids Feels Sorry For You.

It Takes Your Sleeping Self Years To Catch Up To Where You Really Are. ... When You Go On A Trip, In Your Dreams You Will Still Be Home. Then After You've Come Home You'll Dream Of Where You Were. It's A Kind Of Jet Lag Of The Consciousness.

Be Still, And The World Is Bound To Turn Herself Inside Out To Entertain You. Everywhere You Look, Joyful Noise Is Clanging To Drown Out Quiet Desperation.

A Good Title Holds Magic, Some Cognitive Dissonance, A Little Grit Between The Teeth, But Above All It Is The Jumping-off Place Into Wonder.

A Dog Can't Think That Much About What He's Doing, He Just Does What Feels Right.

Literature Sucks You Into Another Psyche. So The Creation Of Empathy Necessarily Influences How You'll Behave To Other People.

Something In Me Was Always Watching Life From The Outside, Permanently Obsessed With The Notion Of Belonging Vs. Not-belonging [to A Group]. It Did Not Make For A Happy Childhood, But It Was Excellent Training For A Writer.

I'm Not Pretending To Be Ingenuous; I Know What I'm Doing.

Value Is Not Made Of Money, But A Tender Balance Of Expectation And Longing.

Last Time I Talked To Her She Didn't Sound Like Herself. She's Depressed. It's Awful What Happens When People Run Out Of Money. They Start Thinking They're No Good.

Awareness Is Everything. Hallie Once Pointed Out To Me That People Worry A Lot More About The Eternity *after* Their Deaths Than The Eternity That Happened Before They Were Born. But It's The Same Amount Of Infinity, Rolling Out In All Directions From Where We Stand.

The Daily Work - That Goes On, It Adds Up.

Inspirational Life

There's Such A Gulf Between Yourself And Who You Were Then, But People Speak To That Other Person And It Answers; It's Like Having A Stranger As A House Guest In Your Skin.

But Kids Don't Stay With You If You Do It Right. It's The One Job Where, The Better You Are, The More Surely You Won't Be Needed In The Long Run.

The Longer You Live, The More Likely You Are To Have Something To Say.

It's Very Important To Distinguish Between Innocence And Naivete. The Innocent Do Not Deserve To Be The Victims Of Violence. But Only The Naive Refuse To Think About The Origins Of Violence And To Pursue The Possibility That The Genesis Of That Hatred Could Be Addressed.

Maybe Life Doesn't Get Any Better Than This, Or Any Worse, And What We Get Is Just What We're Willing To Find: Small Wonders, Where They Grow.

Sometimes I Prayed For Baby Jesus To Make Me Good, But Baby Jesus Didn't.

Our Holiday Food Splurge Was A Small Crate Of Tangerines, Which We Found Ridiculously Thrilling After An Eight-month Abstinence From Citrus.... Lily Hugged Each One To Her Chest Before Undressing It As Gently As A Doll. Watching Her Do That As She Sat Cross-legged On The Floor One Morning In Pink Pajamas, With Bliss Lighting Her Cheeks, I Thought: Lucky Is The World, To Receive This Grateful Child. Value Is Not Made Of Money, But A Tender Balance Of Expectation And Longing.

The Older I Get, The More I Appreciate My Rural Childhood. I Spent A Lot Of Time Outdoors, Unsupervised, Which Is A Blessing.

Children Model The Behavior Of Adults, On Whatever Scale Is Available To Them. Ours Are Growing Up In A Nation Whose Most Important, Influential Men - From Presidents To The Coolest Film Characters - Solve Problems By Killing People. ... We Have Taught Our Children In A Thousand Ways, Sometimes With Flag-waving And Sometimes With A Laugh Track, That The Bad Guy Deserves To Die.

With All Due Respect For The Wondrous Ways People Have Invented To Amuse Themselves And One Another On Paved Surfaces, I Find That This Exodus From The Land Makes Me Unspeakably Sad. I Think Of The Children Who Will Never Know, Intuitively, That A Flower Is A Plant's Way Of Making Love, Or What Silence Sounds Like, Or That Trees Breathe Out What We Breathe In.

When You Pick Up A Novel From The Bed Side Table, You Put Down Your Own Life At The Same Time And You Become Another Person For The Duration.

Silence Has Many Advantages. When You Do Not Speak, Other People Presume You To Be Deaf Or Feeble-minded And Promptly Make A Show Of Their Own Limitations.

But I've Swallowed My Pride Before, That's For Sure. I'm Practically Lined With My Mistakes On The Inside Like A Bad-wallpapered Bathroom.

Don't Wait For The Muse. She Has A Lousy Work Ethic. Writers Just Write.

He Warned Mother Not To Flout God's Will By Expecting Too Much Of Us. "sending A Girl To College Is Like Pouring Water In Your Shoes,' He Still Loves To Say, As Often As Possible. 'it's Hard To Say Which Is Worse, Seeing It Run Out And Waste The Water, Or Seeing It Hold In And Wreck The Shoes.

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.

Empathy Is Really The Opposite Of Spiritual Meanness. It's The Capacity To Understand That Every War Is Both Won And Lost. And That Someone Else's Pain Is As Meaningful As Your Own.

We're Surrounded By Mandates, And I Believe That Literature Should Be Mandate-free. I Feel Very Strongly About That.

Patriotism Threatens Free Speech With Death. It Is Infuriated By Thoughtful Hesitation, Constructive Criticism Of Our Leaders And Pleas For Peace. It Despises People Of Foreign Birth. It Has Specifically Blamed Homosexuals, Feminists And The American Civil Liberties Union. In Other Words, The American Flag Stands For Intimidation, Censorship, Violence, Bigotry, Sexism, Homophobia And Shoving The Constitution Through A Paper Shredder. Whom Are We Calling Terrorists Here?

It's What You Do That Makes Your Soul.

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Sebastian Junger

Jorge Luis Borges

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