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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.

-Barbara Kingsolver

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He Was My Father.

Barbara Kingsolver

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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.

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Parenting Is Something That Happens Mostly While You're Thinking Of Something Else.

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

Everything Truly Important Is Washable.

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

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.

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

Oh, Mercy. If It Catches You In The Wrong Frame Of Mind, The King James Bible Can Make You Want To Drink Poison In No Uncertain Terms.

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.

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

Humans Can Be Fairly Ridiculous Animals.

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

Giving Up On Love

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

It's What You Do That Makes Your Soul.

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.

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

The Happiest People Are The Ones With The Most Community.

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

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.

Because I Write Fiction That Is Based In The Real World, It's Going To Lead People Into Some Of The Modern Dilemmas And Concerns And Even Catastrophes That They Will Think About In A New Way.

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.

It Takes Some Courage To Write Fiction About Politically Controversial Topics. The Dread Is You'll Be Labeled A Political Writer.

Controversial Topics

This Is How Americans Think. You Believe That If Something Terrible Happens To Someone, They Must Have Deserved It.

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.

Good Fiction Creates Empathy. A Novel Takes You Somewhere And Asks You To Look Through The Eyes Of Another Person, To Live Another Life.

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

If We Can't, As Artists, Improve On Real Life, We Should Put Down Our Pencils And Go Bake Bread.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

If The Lord Hasn't Got A Boyfriend Lined Up For Me To Marry, That's His Business.

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.

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

Mistakes Wreck Your Life. But They Make What You Have. It's Kind Of All One. You Know What Hester Told Me When We Were Working The Sheep One Time? She Said It's No Good To Complain About Your Flock, Because It's The Put-together Of All Your Past Choices.

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

But Nothing On This Earth Is Guaranteed, When You Get Right Down To It, You Know ? I've Been Thinking About That. About How Your Kids Aren't Really Yours, They're Just These People That You Try To Keep An Eye On, And Hope You'll All Grow Up Someday To Like Each Other And Still Be In One Piece. What I Mean Is, Everything You Get Is Really Just On Loan. Does That Make Sense?" Sure,"i Said. "like Library Books. Sooner Or Later They've All Got To Go Back Into The Nightdrop.

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.

You Always Need That Spark Of Imagination. Sometimes I'm Midway Through A Book Before It Happens. However, I Don't Wait For The Muse To Descend, I Sit Down Every Day And I Work When I'm Not Delivering Lambs On The Farm.

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.

Alice Wonders If Other Women In The Middle Of The Night Have Begun To Resent Their Formica.

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.

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.

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!

Watching Italians Eat (especially Men, I Have To Say) Is A Form Of Tourism The Books Don't Tell You About. They Close Their Eyes, Raise Their Eyebrows Into Accent Marks, And Make Sounds Of Acute Appreciation. It's Fairly Sexy. Of Course I Don't Know How These Men Behave At Home, If They Help With The Cooking Or Are Vain And Boorish And Mistreat Their Wives. I Realized Mediterranean Cultures Have Their Issues. Fine, Don't Burst My Bubble. I Didn’t Want To Marry These Guys, I Just Wanted To Watch. (p. 247)

Listen. Slide The Weight From Your Shoulders And Move Forward. You Are Afraid You Might Forget, But You Never Will. You Will Forgive And Remember.

Plants Do Everything Animals Do, But Slowly. They Migrate, Communicate, Deceive, Stalk Their Food And, With An Ostentation Of Styles And Perfumes To Put The Animal Kingdom To Shame, They Make Love. It's Just That Catching Them In Flagrante Delicto Might Require Time-lapse Photography.

My Father Wears His Faith Like The Bronze Breastplate Of God's Footsoldiers While Our Mother's Is More Like A Good Cloth Coat With A Secondhand Fit.

Illusions Mistaken For Truth Are The Pavement Under Our Feet. They Are What We Call Civilization.

This Is What It Means To Be Alone: Everyone Is Connected To Everyone Else, Their Bodies Are A Bright Liquid Life Flowing Around You, Sharing A Single Heart That Drives Them To Move All Together. If The Shark Comes They Will All Escape, And Leave You To Be Eaten.

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

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.

This Manuscript Of Yours That Has Just Come Back From Another Editor Is A Precious Package. Don't Consider It Rejected. Consider That You've Addressed It 'to The Editor Who Can Appreciate My Work' And It Has Simply Come Back Stamped 'not At This Address'. Just Keep Looking For The Right Address.

The Things I Carry Closest To My Heart Are Things I Can't Own.

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.

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.

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 Don't *ever* Write About Real People. Art Is Supposed To Be Better Than That. If You Want A Slice Of Life, Look Out The Window.

This Story About Good Food Begins In A Quick-stop Convenience Market.

What Keeps Me Awake At The Wheel Is The Thrill Of Trying Something Completely New With Each Book. I’m Not A Risk-taker In Life, Generally Speaking, But As A Writer I Definitely Choose The Fast Car, The Impossible Rock Face, The Free Fall.

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.

I Prefer To Remain Anomalous.

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

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.

Cooking Is 80 Percent Confidence, A Skill Best Acquired Starting From When The Apron Strings Wrap Around You Twice.

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

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

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.

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.

In Fact, One Of The Things That I Really Love About Literary Fiction Is That It's One Of The Few Kinds Of Writing That Doesn't Tell Us What To Think Or What To Buy Or What To Wear. We're Surrounded By Advertising.

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.

Fiction And Essays Can Create Empathy For The Theoretical Stranger.

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.

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

Culture Is A Slingshot Moved By The Force Of Its Past

People Read Books To Escape The Uncertainties Of Life.

Uncertainty Of Life

I Learned To Produce Whether I Wanted To Or Not. It Would Be Easy To Say Oh, I Have Writer's Block, Oh, I Have To Wait For My Muse. I Don't. Chain That Muse To Your Desk And Get The Job Done.

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.

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.

She Is Inhumanly Alone. And Then, All At Once, She Isn't.

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

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

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

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

In The Places That Call Me Out, I Know I'll Recover My Wordless Childhood Trust In The Largeness Of Life And Its Willingness To Take Me In.

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.

A Woman Without A Man -- A Condition Of 'manlessness' -- Is Defined As Alone. But A Single Mother Is Less Alone Than The Average Housewife.

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?

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Wars And Elections Are Both Too Big And Too Small To Matter In The Long Run. The Daily Work - That Goes On, It Adds Up.

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.

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

Every Minute With A Child Takes Seven Minutes Off Your Life.

There Are Some Who'd Hardly Lift A Finger For Kindness, But They Would Haul Up A Load Of Rock To Dump On Some Soul They Think's Been Too Lucky.

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

The Moth Settled Onto The Curtain And Sat Still. It Was An Astonishing Creature, With Black And White Wings Patterned In Geometric Shapes, Scarlet Underwings, And A Fat White Body With Black Spots Running Down It Like A Snowman's Coal Buttons. No Human Eye Had Looked At This Moth Before; No One Would See Its Friends. So Much Detail Goes Unnoticed In The World.

Black And White

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.

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

Now I'm Starting To Think He Wasn't Supposed To Be My Whole Life, He Was Just This Doorway To Me.

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.

(on Asparagus) Europeans Of The Renaissance Swore By It As An Aphrodisiac, And The Church Banned It From Nunneries.

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

Restraint Equals Indulgence

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

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

Want Is A Thing That Unfurls Unbidden Like Fungus, Opening Large Upon Itself, Stopless, Filling The Sky. But Needs, From One Day To The Next, Are Few Enough To Fit In A Bucket, With Room Enough Left To Rattle Like Brittle Brush In A Dry Wind.

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.

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.

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.

... Urban Friends Ask Me How I Can Stand Living Here, 'so Far From Everything?' When I Hear This Question Over The Phone, I'm Usually Looking Out The Window At A Forest, A Running Creek, And A Vegetable Garden, Thinking: Define Everything.

The Bad Thing About Small-town Life Is That Everybody Knows Your Business...i Suppose That Is My Central Obsession. What We Owe To Society, What We Owe To Ourselves.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Stop A Minute, Right Where You Are. Relax Your Shoulders, Shake Your Head And Spine Like A Dog Shaking Off Cold Water. Tell That Imperious Voice In Your Head To Be Still.

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.

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.

To Think Is Not Always To See.

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.

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.

When The Scope Of The Problem Seems Insuperable, Isn't It Time To Call This One, Give It Up, And Get On With Life As We Know It. I Do Know That Answer To That One: That's Called Child Abuse. When My Teenager Worries That Her Generation Won't Be Able To Fix This Problem, I Have To Admit To Her That It Won't Be Up To Her Generation. It's Up To Mine. This Is A Now-or-never Kind Of Project.

Your Dreams, What You Hope For And All That, It's Not Separate From Your Life. It Grows Right Up Out Of It.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

If You Can't Dress Expensive, Dress Memorable.

I Know How People Are, With Their Habits Of Mind. Most Will Sail Through From Cradle To Grave With A Conscience Clean As Snow...i Know People. Most Have No Earthly Notion Of The Price Of A Snow-white Conscience.

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

Now, See, That's Why You Want Internet Friends. You Can Find People Just Exactly Like You. Screw Your Neighbors And Your Family, Too Messy...the Trouble Is, Once You Filter Out Everybody That Doesn't Agree With You, All That's Left Is Maybe This One Retired Surfer Guy Living In Idaho.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

A Choir Of Seedlings Arching Their Necks Out Of Rotted Tree Stumps, Sucking Life Out Of Death. I Am The Forest's Conscience, But Remember, The Forest Eats Itself And Lives Forever.

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

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

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.

What I Want Is So Simple I Almost Can't Say It: Elementary Kindness.

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

My Worst Nightmare Is Being Stuck Somewhere With Nothing To Read.

Worst Nightmares

Gilbert Has Established Herself As A Straight-up Storyteller Who Dares Us Into Adventures Of Worldly Discovery, And This Novel Stands As A Winning Next Act. “the Signature Of All Things” Is A Bracing Homage To The Many Natures Of Genius And The Inevitable Progress Of Ideas, In A World That Reveals Its Best Truths To The Uncommonly Patient Minds.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

If My Setting Is New To A Reader, Or The Concerns Of The Novel Are New, I Hope They Will Learn Something About The World. I Would Like To Say That They Can Trust That What They Do Learn In The Novel Will Be Accurate, Because I Pay A Lot Of Attention To Facts. I Do A Lot Of Research To Make Sure That I'm Not Giving Them, You Know, Blue Moons Of Jupiter. It's Not Science Fiction.

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

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.

I Love Developing Children As Characters. Children Rarely Have Important Roles In Literary Fiction - They Are Usually Defined As Cute Or Precious, Or They Create A Plot By Being Kidnapped Or Dying.

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.

The Loudest Sound On Earth, She Thought, Is A Man With Nothing To Do.

Thanks For This Day, For All Birds Safe In Their Nests, For Whatever This Is, For Life.

There Are Days When I Am Envious Of My Hens: When I Hunger For A Purpose As Perfect And Sure As A Single Daily Egg.

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.

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.

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

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

It Kills You To See Them Grow Up. But I Guess It Would Kill You Quicker If They Didn't.

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.

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.

Planning Complex, Beautiful Meals And Investing One's Heart And Time In Their Preparation Is The Opposite Of Self-indulgence. Kitchen-based Family Gatherings Are Process-oriented, Cooperative, And In The Best Of Worlds, Nourishing And Soulful. A Lot Of Calories Get Used Up Before Anyone Sits Down To Consume. But More Importantly, A Lot Of Talk Happens First, News Exchanged, Secrets Revealed Across Generations, Paths Cleared With A Touch On The Arm. I Have Given And Received Some Of My Life's Most Important Hugs With Those Big Oven-mitt Potholders On Both Hands.

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.

To People Who Think Of Themselves As God's Houseguests, American Enterprise Must Seem Arrogant Beyond Belief. Or Stupid. A Nation Of Amnesiacs, Proceeding As If There Were No Other Day But Today. Assuming The Land Could Also Forget What Had Been Done To It.

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.

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.

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.

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

From The Fallen Tree Everybody Makes Firewood.

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.

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.

Listen. To Live Is To Be Marked. To Live Is To Change, To Acquire The Words Of A Story, And That Is The Only Celebration We Mortals Really Know. In Perfect Stillness, Frankly, I've Only Found Sorrow.

I Can Count All The Ways In Which Being A Mother Has Enriched My Understanding Of The World, Of Character, My Sense Of The Future And My Attachment To It. I Can't Imagine What Kind Of Writer I'd Be If I Didn't Have My Kids.

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.

There Is No Perfect Time To Write. There Is Only Now.

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