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God Is Frightful, God Is Great--you Pick. I Choose This: God Is In The Details, The Completely Unnecessary Miracles Sometimes Tossed Up As Stars To Guide Us. They Are The Promise Of Good Fortune In A Cloudless Day, And The Animals In The Clouds; Look Hard Enough, And You'll See Them. Don't Ask If They're Real.

-Barbara Kingsolver

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God Is Frightful, God

Barbara Kingsolver

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God Is Frightful, God Is Great--you Pick. I Choose This: God Is In The Details, The Completely Unnecessary Miracles Sometimes Tossed Up As Stars To Guide Us. They Are The Promise Of Good Fortune In A Cloudless Day, And The Animals In The Clouds; Look Hard Enough, And You'll See Them. Don't Ask If They're Real.

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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.

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

Giving Up On Love

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.

They All Attended Hester's Church, Which Dellarobia Viewed As A Complicated Pyramid Scheme Of Moral Debt And Credit Resting Ultimately On The Shoulders Of The Lord, But Rife With Middle Managers.

Pyramid Schemes

Even Feigning Surprise, Pretending It Was Unexpected And Saying A Ritual Thanks, Is Surely Wiser Than Just Expecting Everything So Carelessly.

Humans Can Be Fairly Ridiculous Animals.

The Conspicuous Consumption Of Limited Resources Has Yet To Be Accepted Widely As A Spiritual Error, Or Even Bad Manners

Limited Resources

You See Mother, You Had No Life Of Your Own. They Have No Idea. One Has Only A Life Of One's Own.

It Occurs To Her That There Is One Thing About People You Can Never Understand Well Enough: How Entirely Inside Themselves They Are.

...whatever Is Lovely, Whatever Is Gracious, If There Is Anything Worthy Of Praise, Think About These Things. And Peace Will Be With You.

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.

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 Human Being Can Be Good Or Bad Or Right Or Wrong, Maybe. But How Can You Say A Person Is Illegal? You Just Can't. That's All There Is To It.

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.

Morning Always Comes.

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.

You Force People To Stop Asking Questions, And Before You Know It They Have Auctioned Off The Question Mark, Or Sold It For Scrap. No Boldness. No Good Ideas For Fixing What's Broken In The Land. Because If You Happen To Mention It's Broken, You Are Automatically Disqualified.

Asking Questions

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

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?

No Other Continent Has Endured Such An Unspeakably Bizarre Combination Of Foreign Thievery And Foreign Goodwill.

Beginning A Novel Is Always Hard. It Feels Like Going Nowhere. I Always Have To Write At Least 100 Pages That Go Into The Trashcan Before It Finally Begins To Work. It's Discouraging, But Necessary To Write Those Pages. I Try To Consider Them Pages -100 To Zero Of The Novel.

Culture Is A Slingshot Moved By The Force Of Its Past

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

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?

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

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.

I Never Think That Anything I'm Writing Is Bluntly Political In Any Way. I'm Not Going For Commentary.

Nine-tenths Of Human Law Is About Possession.

Wherever I Am, Let Me Never Forget To Distinguish Want From Need

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

Honk If You Love Jesus, Text While Driving If You Want To Meet Up.

Nonfiction Requires Enormous Discipline. You Construct The Terms Of Your Story, And Then You Stick To Them.

Our Plans Are Small And Somewhat Absurd.

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.

What You Lose In Blindness Is The Space Around You, The Place Where You Are, And Without That You Might Not Exist. You Could Be Nowhere At All.

For Time And Eternity There Have Been Fathers Like Nathan Who Simply Can See No Way To Have A Daughter But To Own Her Like A Plot Of Land. To Work Her, Plow Her Under, Rain Down A Dreadful Poison Upon Her. Miraculously, It Causes These Girls To Grow. They Elongate On The Pale Slender Stalks Of Their Longing, Like Sunflowers With Heavy Heads. You Can Shield Them With Your Body And Soul, Trying To Absorb That Awful Rain, But They'll Still Move Toward Him. Without Cease They'll Bend To His Light.

I Have My Own Sheep And I Literally Sheer The Sheep And Knot Sweaters For Friends And Family From Scratch.

Family And Friends

Nothing To Do With Nature, Unless You Count Human Nature.

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

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

Things You Love

Why Is It That Only Girls Stand On The Sides Of Their Feet? As If They're Afraid To Plant Themselves?

It Is True That I Do Not Speak As Well As I Can Think. But That Is True Of Most People, As Nearly As I Can Tell.

The Wrong Words Are Impossible When There Are No Words.

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.

We Must Surely Appear To The World As Exactly What We Are: A Nation That Organizes Its Economy Around Consuming Twice As Much Oil As It Produces, And Around The Profligate Wastefulness Of The Wars And Campaigns Required To Defend Such Consumption. In Recent Years We Have Defined Our National Interest Largely In Terms Of The Oil Fields And Pipelines We Need To Procure Fuel.

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.

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

Mexico Admits You Through An Arched Stone Orifice Into The Tree-filled Courtyard Of Its Heart, Where A Dog Pisses Against A Wall And A Waiter Hustles Through A Curtain Of Jasmine To Bring A Bowl Of Tortilla Soup, Steaming With Cilantro And Lime. Cats Stalk Lizards Among The Clay Pots Around The Fountain, Doves Settle Into The Flowering Vines And Coo Their Prayers, Thankful For The Existence Of Lizards. The Potted Plants Silently Exhale, Outgrowing Their Clay Pots. Like Mexico's Children They Stand Pinched And Patient In Last Year's Too-small Shoes.

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

I Stir In Bed And The Memories Rise Out Of Me Like A Buzz Of Flies From A Carcass. I Crave To Be Rid Of Them.

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.

God Is Frightful, God Is Great--you Pick. I Choose This: God Is In The Details, The Completely Unnecessary Miracles Sometimes Tossed Up As Stars To Guide Us. They Are The Promise Of Good Fortune In A Cloudless Day, And The Animals In The Clouds; Look Hard Enough, And You'll See Them. Don't Ask If They're Real.

You Can Be As Earnest And Ridiculous As You Need To Be, If You Don't Attempt It In Isolation. The Ridiculously Earnest Are Known To Travel In Groups. And They Are Known To Change The World.

If You Never Stepped On Anybody's Toes, You Never Been For A Walk.

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.

That's How It Is: Some People Are Content To Wait Till You Ask, While Others Jump Right In With The Whole Story.

...prodigal Summer, The Season Of Extravagant Procreation. It Could Wear Out Everything In Its Path With Its Passionate Excesses, But Nothing Alive With Wings Or A Heart Or A Seed Curled Into Itself In The Ground Could Resist Welcoming It Back When It Came.

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.

It's Terrible To Lose Somebody, But It's Also True That Some People Never Have Anybody To Lose, And I Think That's Got To Be So Much Worse.

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

Inspirational Life

We Aimed For No More Than To Have Dominion Over Every Creature That Moved Upon The Earth. And So It Came To Pass That We Stepped Down There On A Place We Believed Unformed, Where Only Darkness Moved On The Face Of The Waters. Now You Laugh, Day And Night, While You Gnaw On My Bones. But What Else Could We Have Thought? Only That It Began And Ended With Us. What Do We Know, Even Now? Ask The Children. Look At What They Grew Up To Be. We Can Only Speak Of The Things We Carried With Us, And The Things We Took Away.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

God Doesn’t Need To Punish Us. He Just Grants Us A Long Enough Life To Punish Ourselves.

My Own Relationships With The Animals In My Life Are Absurdly Complex: Some I Love, Some I Eat, And The Scraps Left Over From The Ones I Eat, I Feed To The Ones I Love.

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

It's One Thing To Carry Your Life Wherever You Go. Another Thing To Always Go Looking For It Somewhere Else.

I Believe That The People Who Survive A Cataclysm, Rather Than Those Who Stand By And Analyze It, Are Nearly Always The More Credible Witnesses To Their Own History.

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.

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.

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.

What Life Can I Live That Will Let Me Breathe In And Out And Love Somebody Or Something And Not Run Off Screaming Into The Woods?

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. You Keep Your Eyes Open, You See This Damned-to-hell World You Got Born Into, And You Ask Yourself, 'what Life Can I Live That Will Let Me Breathe In & Out And Love Somebody Or Something And Not Run Off Screaming Into The Woods?

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.

I Do My Best Work If I Think About What It Is I Have To Offer.

Pure And Unblemished Souls Must Taste Very Bland, With An Aftertaste Of Bitterness.

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.

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.

You Can't Really Know The Person Standing Before You, Because Always There Is Some Missing Piece

As A Biologist, I Can't Think Of Myself As Anything But An Animal Among Animals And Plant.

Mom Is Losing, No Doubt, Because Our Vegetables Have Come To Lack Two Features Of Interest: Nutrition And Flavor. Storage And Transport Take Predictable Tolls On The Volatile Plant Compounds That Subtly Add Up To Taste And Food Value. Breeding To Increase Shelf Life Also Has Tended To Decrease Palatability. Bizarre As It Seems, We've Accepted A Tradeoff That Amounts To: "give Me Every Vegetable In Every Season, Even If It Tastes Like A Cardboard Picture Of Its Former Self."

A Sound-bite Culture Can't Discuss Science Very Well. Exactly What We're Losing When We Reduce Biodiversity, The Causes And Consequences Of Global Warming-these Traumas Can't Be Adequately Summarized In An Evening News Wrap-up.

Global Commerce Is Driven By A Single Conviction: The Inalienable Right To Earn Profit, Regardless Of Any Human Cost.

Most Of The Girls My Age, Or Even Younger, Have Babies. They Appear Way Too Young To Be Married, Till You Look In Their Eyes. Then You'll See It. Their Eyes Look Happy And Sad At The Same Time, But Unexcited By Anything, Shifting Easily Off To The Side As If They've Already Seen Most Of What There Is. Married Eyes.

All Of The Promises Of Politicians, Generals, Madmen, And Crusaders That War Can Create Peace Have Yet To Be Borne Out.

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.

In My Own Worst Seasons I've Come Back From The Colorless World Of Despair By Forcing Myself To Look Hard, For A Long Time, At A Single Glorious Thing: A Flame Of Red Geranium Outside My Bedroom Window. And Then Another: My Daughter In A Yellow Dress. And Another: The Perfect Outline Of A Full, Dark Sphere Behind The Crescent Moon. Until I Learned To Be In Love With My Life Again. Like A Stroke Victim Retraining New Parts Of The Brain To Grasp Lost Skills, I Have Taught Myself Joy, Over And Over Again(15).

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?

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.

It's Surprising How Much Memory Is Built Around Things Unnoticed At The Time.

Before That I Was A Scientist. I Did Research In Population Biology. And That's What I Always Go Back To, It Helps Me To Remember That People Are Not The End Of The World, Although We May Be When It Comes To It. We're Just One Species Among Millions In This World.

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

A Person Could Spend Most Of A Lifetime In Retrospective Terror, Thinking Of All The Things One Nearly Didn't Do.

A Flower Is Your Cousin...sometimes A Person Has Got To Take A Life, Like A Chicken's Or A Hog's When You Need It...but Nobody Is So Hungry They Need To Kill A Flower. Cherokee Great-grandmother

Independence Is A Complex Word In A Foreign Tongue. To Resist Occupation, Whether You're A Nation Or Merely A Woman, You Must Understand The Language Of Your Enemy. Conquest And Liberation And Democrac And Divorce Are Words That Mean Squat, Basically, When You Have Hungry Children And Clothes To Get Out On The Line And It Looks Like Rain.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Root Out All The "to Be" Verbs In Your Prose And Bludgeon Them Until Dead. No "it Was" Or "they Are" Or "i Am." Don't Let It Be, Make It Happen.

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.

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

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 Reason Most People Have Kids Is Because They Get Pregnant.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Respecting The Dignity Of A Spectacular Food Means Enjoying It At Its Best. Europeans Celebrate The Short Season Of Abundant Asparagus As A Form Of Holiday. In The Netherlands The First Cutting Coincides With Father's Day, On Which Restaurants May Feature All-asparagus Menus And Hand Out Neckties Decorated With Asparagus Spears.

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

I'm Of A Fearsome Mind To Throw My Arms Around Every Living Librarian Who Crosses My Path, On Behalf Of The Souls They Never Knew They Saved.

Small Change, Small Wonders - These Are The Currency Of My Endurance And Ultimately Of My Life.

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.

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.

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.

He Needs To Go Rub His Soul Against Life.

On The Day I Swore To Uphold The Hippocratic Oath, The Small Hairs On The Back Of My Neck Stood Up As I Waited For Lightning To Strike. Who Was I, Vowing Calmly Among All These Necktied Young Men To Steal Life Out Of Nature's Jaws, Every Old Time We Got Half A Chance And A Paycheck?... I Could Not Accept The Contract: That Every Child Born Human Upon This Earth Comes With A Guarantee Of Perfect Health And Old Age Clutched In Its Small Fist.

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.

Anybody Can Get Worked Up, If They Have The Intention. It's Peacefulness That Is Hard To Come By On Purpose.

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

Because I Could Not Stop For Death He Kindly Stopped For Me, Or Paused At Least To Strike A Glancing Blow With His Sky-blue Mouth As He Passed.

It Is Completely Usual For Me To Get Up In The Morning, Take A Look Around, And Laugh Out Loud.

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.

It's The Thing You Fear Most That Walks Beside You All The Time.

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.

Finally, Cooking Is Good Citizenship. It's The Only Way To Get Serious About Putting Locally Raised Foods Into Your Diet, Which Keeps Farmlands Healthy And Grocery Money In The Neighborhood.

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.

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.

Children Can Be Your Heartache. But That Doesn't Matter, You Have To Go On And Have Them . . . It Works Out.

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.

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.

Fish Gotta Swim, Birds Gotta Fly, Writers Will Go To Stupefying Lengths To Get The Infernal Roar Of Words Out Of Their Skulls And Onto Paper.

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.

Fiction And Essays Can Create Empathy For The Theoretical Stranger.

I Attempted Briefly To Consecrate Myself In The Public Library, Believing Every Crack In My Soul Could Be Chinked With A Book.

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

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.

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.

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

A Mother's Body Remembers Her Babies-the Folds Of Soft Flesh, The Softly Furred Scalp Against Her Nose. Each Child Has It's Own Entreaties To Body And Soul.

Given My Own Circumstances, I Find That Anything Can Turn Out To Belong Nearly Anywhere.

Time Cures You First, And Then It Kills You.

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

You Think You're The Foreigner Here, And I'm The American, And I Just Look The Other Way While The President Or Somebody Sends Down This And That . . . To Torture People With. But Nobody Asked My Permission, Okay? Sometimes I Feel Like I'm A Foreigner, Too.

Silence Has Many Advantages…i Write And Draw In My Notebook And I Read Anything I Please.

To Think Is Not Always To See.

If You Ask Me, When Something Extraordinary Shows Up In Your Life In The Middle Of The Night, You Give It A Name And Make It The Best Home You Can.

Bitter Words Normally Evaporate With The Moisture Of Breath, After A Quarrel. In Order To Become Permanent, They Require Transcribers, Reporters, Complicit Black Hearts.

He Had Senile Dementia And Liked To Go Outside Naked, But He Could Still Do Two Things Perfectly: Win At Checkers And Write Out Prescriptions.

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.

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.

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

It's The Same Struggle For Each Of Us, And The Same Path Out: The Utterly Simple, Infinitely Wise, Ultimately Defiant Act Of Loving One Thing And Then Another, Loving Our Way Back To Life.

I Did It To Win Love, And To Prove Myself Capable. Not To Move Mountains. In My Opinions, Mountains Don't Move. They Only Look Changed When You Look Down On Them From Great Height.

Arterial-plaque Specials That Save Minutes Now Can Cost Years, Later On.

So One Time When I Was Working In This Motel One Of The Toilets Leaked And I Had To Replace The Flapper Ball. Here's What It Said On The Package; I Kept It Till I Knew It By Heart: 'please Note. Parts Are Included For All Installations, But No Installation Requires All Of The Parts.' That's Kind Of My Philosophy About Men. I Don't Think There's An Installation Out There That Could Use All My Parts.

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

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.

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

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

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.

The Important Thing Isn't The House. It's The Ability To Make It. You Carry That In Your Brain And In Your Hands, Wherever You Go.

After 'the Poisonwood Bible' Was Published, Several People Believed That My Parents Were Missionaries, Which Could Not Be Further From The Truth.

For Scientists, Reality Is Not Optional.

I Don't Know What Rituals My Kids Will Carry Into Adulthood, Whether They'll Grow Up Attached To Homemade Pizza On Friday Nights, Or The Scent Of Peppers Roasting Over A Fire, Or What. I Do Know That Flavors Work Their Own Ways Under The Skin, Into The Heart Of Longing. Where My Kids Are Concerned I Find Myself Hoping For The Simplest Things: That If Someday They Crave Orchards Where Their Kids Can Climb Into The Branches And Steal Apples, The World Will Have Trees Enough With Arms To Receive Them.

I Know People. Most Have No Earthly Notion Of The Price Of A Snow-white Conscience.

If You Want Sweet Dreams, You've Got To Live A Sweet Life.

What A Writer Can Do, What A Fiction Writer Or A Poet Or An Essay Writer Can Do Is Re-engage People With Their Own Humanity.

Sometimes I Still Have American Dreams. I Mean Literally. I See Microwave Ovens And Exercise Machines And Grocery Store Shelves With 30 Brands Of Shampoo, And I Look At These Things Oddly, In My Dream. I Stand And Think, "what Is All This For? What Is The Hunger That Drives This Need?" I Think It's Fear. Codi, I Hope You Won't Be Hurt By This, But I Don't Think I'll Ever Be Going Back. I Don't Think I Can.

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.

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.

Every One Of Us Is Called Upon, Perhaps Many Times, To Start A New Life. A Frightening Diagnosis, A Marriage, A Move, Loss Of A Job...and Onward Full-tilt We Go, Pitched And Wrecked And Absurdly Resolute, Driven In Spite Of Everything To Make Good On A New Shore. To Be Hopeful, To Embrace One Possibility After Another--that Is Surely The Basic Instinct...crying Out: High Tide! Time To Move Out Into The Glorious Debris. Time To Take This Life For What It Is.

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.

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

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.

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

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

The Way I See It, A Person Isn't Nothing More Than A Scarecrow... The Only Difference Between One That Stands Up Good And One That Blows Over Is What Kind Of A Stick They're Stuck Up There On.

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.

Ah, The Mysterious Croak. Here Today, Gone Tomorrow. It's The Best Reason I Can Think Of To Throw Open The Blinds And Risk Belief. Right Now, This Minute, Time To Move Out Into The Grief And Glory. High Tide.

No Matter What Kind Of Night You're Having, Morning Always Wins.

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.

The Standard Approach Has Been To Pump Up The Dosage Of Chemicals ... Twenty Percent Of These Approved-for-use Pesticides Are Listed By The Epa As Carcinogenic In Humans.

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

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.

If I Had To Give Up My Life For Anything, It Would Have To Have The Resilience Of Hope, The Elation Of New Literacy, The Brilliant Life Of A Field Of Flowers, The Elementary Kindness Of Bread. Nothing Short Of That. It Would Have To Be Something As Sure As Love.

The Past Is All We Know Of The Future.

I Rarely Think Of Poetry As Something I Make Happen; It Is More Accurate To Say That It Happens To Me. Like A Summer Storm, A House Afire, Or The Coincidence Of Both On The Same Day.

A Meaningless Phrase Repeated Again And Again Begins To Resemble Truth.

Again And Again

Plot Comes First. The Plot Is The Archictecture Of Your Novel. You Wouldn't Build A House Without A Plan. If I Wrote Without A Plot, It Would Just Be A Pile Of Bricks. Characters Are Your Servants. They Must Serve Your Plot.

Every Life Is Different Because You Passed This Way And Touched History... Listen Being Dead Is Not Worse Than Being Alive. It Is Different Though. You Could Say The View Is Larger.

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Brian Ferneyhough

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