Background Image

...

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.

-Barbara Kingsolver

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

I Believe With All

Barbara Kingsolver

...

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.

Views: 8

Topic

More From Barbara Kingsolver

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

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

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

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.

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.

...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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

In A World As Wrong As This One, All We Can Do Is Make Things As Right As We Can.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Restraint Equals Indulgence

To Be Hopeful, To Embrace One Possibility After Another--that Is Surely The Basic Instinct. Baser Even Than Hate, The Thing With Teeth, Which Can Be Stilled With A Tone Of Voice Or Stunned By Beauty. If The Whole World Of The Living Has To Turn On The Single Point Of Remaining Alive, That Pointed Endurance Is The Poetry Of Hope. The Thing With Feathers.

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

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

Limited Resources

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

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.

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

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

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 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.

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

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

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

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

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.

Do You Think Its Possible To Live Without Wanting To Put Your Name On Your Paintings? To Belong To A Group So Securely You Don't Need To Rise Above It?

For Scientists, Reality Is Not Optional.

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

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

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

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

Loose Lips Sink Ships.

The Last Generation's Worst Fears Became The Next One's B-grade Entertainment.

Poor Congo, Barefoot Bride Of Men Who Took Her Jewels And Promised The Kingdom.

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.

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

I'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.

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

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.

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

Giving Up On Love

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

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 Daily Work - That Goes On, It Adds Up.

Inspirational Life

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.

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

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

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

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.

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."

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

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

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

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.

The Talkers Are Rising Above The Thinkers.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

I Don't Look Like Who I Am.

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.

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.

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.

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

To Think Is Not Always To See.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Worst Nightmares

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

I Concentrate On Character, Theme, Language, Structure, Voice. It Actually Surprises Me That No Matter What I Write, People Declare It "intently Political." I'm Just Writing About The World I Know, As It Is. Wounds And Griefs Included.

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

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.

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.

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.

War So Conspicuously Benefits Rich Men And Kills The Poor Ones.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

School Is About Two Parts Abcs To Fifty Parts Where Do I Stand In The Great Pecking Order Of Humankind.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

People Ask Without Wanting To Know.

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.

The Changes We Dread Most May Contain Our Salvation.

Everything Truly Important Is Washable.

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

Family And Friends

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

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.

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

It Seems Very Safe To Me To Be Surrounded By Green Growing Things And Water.

Codi: Gives You The Willies, Doesn't It? The Thought Of Raising Kids In A Place Where The Front Yard Ends In A Two-hundred-foot Drop? [referring To Cliff Dwellings] Loyd: No Worse Than Raising Up Kids Where The Front Yard Ends In A Freeway.

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 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.

Nine-tenths Of Human Law Is About Possession.

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.

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.

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

Things You Love

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Organization Is The Religion Of The Single Parent.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

I Prefer To Remain Anomalous.

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.

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

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.

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

Prayer Had Always Struck Me As More Or Less A Glorified Attempt At A Business Transaction.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

Every Betrayal Contains A Perfect Moment, A Coin Stamped Heads Or Tails With Salvation On The Other Side.

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.

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

...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.

Your Own Family Resemblances Are A Frustrating Code, Most Easily Read By Those Who Know You Least.

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

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

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.

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

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.

People Read Books To Escape The Uncertainties Of Life.

Uncertainty Of Life

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.

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

The Wrong Words Are Impossible When There Are No Words.

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.

What We Lose In Our Great Human Exodus From The Land Is A Rooted Sense, As Deep And Intangible As Religious Faith, Of Why We Need To Hold On To The Wild And Beautiful Places That Once Surrounded Us.

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.

Trending Author

Carly Rae Jepsen

Jeffrey Gitomer

Van Wyck Brooks

Category