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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.

-Barbara Kingsolver

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I Believe That The

Barbara Kingsolver

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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.

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Restraint Equals Indulgence

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.

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.

Morality Is Not A Large, Constructed *thing* You Have Or Have Not, But Simply A Capacity. Something You Carry With You In Your Brain And In Your Hands.

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

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

I Don't Look Like Who I Am.

The Past Is All We Know Of The Future.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Why Does A Person Even Get Up In The Morning? You Have Breakfast, You Floss Your Teeth So You'll Have Healthy Gums In Your Old Age, And Then You Get In Your Car And Drive Down I-10 And Die. Life Is So Stupid I Can't Stand It.

When People Are Frightened About Going Hungry And Paying Their Mortgages, A Scarcity Model Begins To Prevail; They Fear Someone Else Will Get Their Piece Of The Pie.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

The Truth Needs So Little Rehearsal.

...trust In Creation Which Is Made Fresh Daily And Doesn’t Suffer In Translation. This God Does Not Work In Especially Mysterious Ways. The Sun Here Rises And Sets At Six Exactly. A Caterpillar Becomes A Butterfly. A Bird Raises Its Brood In The Forest And A Greenheart Tree Will Only Grow From A Greenheart Seed. He Brings Drought Sometimes Followed By Torrential Rains And If These Things Aren’t Always What I Had In Mind, They Aren’t My Punishment Either. They’re Rewards, Let’s Say For The Patience Of A Seed.

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

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."

People Love To Read About Sins And Errors, But Not Their Own.

A Woman Knows She Can Walk Away From A Pot To Tend Something Else And The Pot Will Go On Boiling; If She Couldn't This World Would End At Once.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

It's What You Do That Makes Your Soul.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

To Think Is Not Always To See.

People Read Books To Escape The Uncertainties Of Life.

Uncertainty Of Life

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

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

Mr. Shepherd, Ye Cannot Stop A Bad Thought From Coming Into Your Head. But Ye Need Not Pull Up A Chair And Bide It Sit Down." - Mrs. Brown

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

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

I Struggle With Confidence, Every Time. I’m Never Completely Sure I Can Write Another Book. Maybe My Scope Is Too Grand, My Questions Too Hard, Surely Readers Won’t Want To Follow Me Here. A Novel Is Like A Cathedral, It Knocks You Down To Size When You Enter Into It.

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.

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

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

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

Worst Nightmares

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.

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

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.

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.

A Certain Feeling Comes From Throwing Your Good Life Away, And It Is One Part Rapture.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

A Wife Is The Earth Itself, Changing Hands, Bearing Scars.

There Are Always More Questions. Science As A Process Is Never Complete. It Is Not A Foot Race, With A Finish Line.... People Will Always Be Waiting At A Particular Finish Line: Journalists With Their Cameras, Impatient Crowds Eager To Call The Race, Astounded To See The Scientists Approach, Pass The Mark, And Keep Running. It's A Common Misunderstanding, He Said. They Conclude There Was No Race. As Long As We Won't Commit To Knowing Everything, The Presumption Is We Know Nothing.

Knowing Everything

There Is Something In Us That Loves Certain Disasters And The Fever Of This Moment And Surrendering To That.

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

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.

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.

The March Of Human Progress Seemed Mainly A Matter Of Getting Over That Initial Shock Of Being Here.

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.

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

I Prefer To Remain Anomalous.

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.

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

Downstream Is Always Someone Else's Up.

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.

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

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.

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.

Hallie And I... Were All There Was. The Image In The Mirror That Proves You Are Still Here. We Had Exactly One Sister Apiece. We Grew Up Knowing The Simple Arithmetic Of Scarcity: A Sister Is More Precious Than An Eye.

Tomorrow These Villagers Would Carry Their Secret Icons Into The Church Without Any Priest And Light The Candles Themselves, Moving Together In Single-minded Grace. Like The School Of The Fish, So Driven To Righteousness They Could Flout The Law, Declare The Safety Of Their Souls, Then Go Home And Destroy The Evidence.

I Lost A Child," She Said, Meeting Lusa's Eyes Directly. "i Thought I Wouldn't Live Through It. But You Do. You Learn To Love The Place Somebody Leaves Behind For You.

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

Households That Have Lost The Soul Of Cooking From Their Routines May Not Know What They Are Missing: The Song Of A Stir-fry Sizzle, The Small Talk Of Clinking Measuring Spoons, The Yeasty Scent Of Rising Dough, The Painting Of Flavors Onto A Pizza Before It Slides Into The Oven.

...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.

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.

If You're Standing In The Manure Pile, It's Somebody's Job To Mention The Stink.

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

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

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

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

Pay Attention To Your Passions. They Are The Key To Starting And Finishing The Book You Are Meant To Write. I Don't Believe In Talent. I Believe In Passion.

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

Nine-tenths Of Human Law Is About Possession.

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.

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

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

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.

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?

I Could Never Work Out Whether We Were To View Religion As A Life-insurance Policy Or A Life Sentence. I Can Understand A Wrathful God Who'd Just As Soon Dangle Us All From A Hook. And I Can Understand A Tender, Unprejudiced Jesus. But I Could Never Quite Feature The Two Of Them Living In The Same House. You Wind Up Walking On Eggshells, Never Knowing Which... Is At Home At The Moment.

Loose Lips Sink Ships.

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

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

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.

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.

The Wrong Words Are Impossible When There Are No Words.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Controversial Topics

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.

Everything Truly Important Is Washable.

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.

Back Then I Was Still Appalled That God Would Set Down His Barefoot Boy And Girl Dollies Into An Eden Where, Presumably, He Had Just Turned Loose Elephantiasis And Microes That Eat The Human Cornea. Now I Understand, God Is Not Just Rooting Fo The Dollies.

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.

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

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

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

I Personally Am Inclined To Approach [housework] The Way Governments Treat Dissent: Ignore It Until It Revolts.

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.

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

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.

Americans Who Read And Think Are Patriots Of The First Order. The Kind Who Know Enough To Roll Their Eyes Whenever Anyone Tries To Claim Sole Custody Of The Flag And Weild It As A Blunt Instrument. There Are As Many Ways To Love America As There Are Americans, And Our Country Needs Us All.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

I Believe With All My Heart In Delivering On My Contract With My Readers. They've Got Plenty Of Other Things To Do, So I Had Better Give Them A Reason To Turn Every One Of These 550 Pages. This Is My Promise: I Solemnly Swear I'll Make You Laugh Out Loud At Least Once, Cry A Little In Private, And Burn Whatever You Left On The Stove.

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

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

Limited Resources

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

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.

... 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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Inspirational Life

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!

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.

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

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.

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.

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

I Don't Understand How Any Good Art Could Fail To Be Political.

If You're Writing, You're A Writer. If You're Talking About It Or Thinking About It, I'm Not So Sure. Writing Is Ninety-eight Percent Work And Two Percent Magic.

A Miscarriage Is A Natural And Common Event. All Told, Probably More Women Have Lost A Child From This World Than Haven't. Most Don't Mention It, And They Go On From Day To Day As If It Hadn't Happened, So People Imagine A Woman In This Situation Never Really Knew Or Loved What She Had. But Ask Her Sometime: How Old Would Your Child Be Now? And She'll Know.

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.

I Know I Have To Write About The Things That Keep Me Awake At Night.

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

Don’t Try To Make Life A Mathematics Problem With Yourself In The Center And Everything Coming Out Equal. When You’re Good, Bad Things Can Still Happen. And If You’re Bad, You Can Still Be Lucky.

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

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.

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.

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

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 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.

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

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.

There's Always A Part Of Your Nation's History That You Haven't Been Told That... Has A Powerful Impact On How You Yourself May Behave And May Believe.

There Is A Strange Moment In Time, After Something Horrible Happens, When You Know It's True, But You Haven't Told Anyone Yet.

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

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 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.

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

The Changes We Dread Most May Contain Our Salvation.

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

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Masaharu Morimoto

Miguel Angel Ruiz

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