Background Image

...

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.

-Barbara Kingsolver

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

If I Had To

Barbara Kingsolver

...

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.

Views: 4

Topic

More From Barbara Kingsolver

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

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

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

Nine-tenths Of Human Law Is About Possession.

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

Worst Nightmares

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Time Cures You First, And Then It Kills You.

From The Fallen Tree Everybody Makes Firewood.

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

I Prefer To Remain Anomalous.

There Is No Point Treating A Depressed Person As Though She Were Just Feeling Sad, Saying, 'there Now, Hang On, You'll Get Over It.' Sadness Is More Or Less Like A Head Cold- With Patience, It Passes. Depression Is Like Cancer.

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.

Solitude Is A Human Presumption. Every Quiet Step Is Thunder To Beetle Life Underfoot, A Tug Of Impalpable Thread On The Web Pulling Mate To Mate And Predator To Prey, A Beginning Or An End. Every Choice Is A World Made New For The Chosen.

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.

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

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?

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

For Scientists, Reality Is Not Optional.

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

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

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

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.

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

Things You Love

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.

A Careless Way Of Sauntering Across The Earth And Breaking Open Its Treasures, A Terrible Dependency On Sucking Out The World's Best Juices For Ourselves-these May Also Be Our Enemies. The Changes We Dread Most May Contain Our Salvation.

But Children Robbed Of Love Will Dwell On Magic.

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

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

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.

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

Controversial Topics

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

Maybe He's Been In Africa So Long He Has Forgotten That We Christians Have Our Own System Of Marriage, And It Is Called Monotony.

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.

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.

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.

The Happiest People Are The Ones With The Most Community.

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

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

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

Organization Is The Religion Of The Single Parent.

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.

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.

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

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 Changes We Dread Most May Contain Our Salvation.

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

I Learned To Write By Reading The Kind Of Books I Wished I'd Written.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

People Read Books To Escape The Uncertainties Of Life.

Uncertainty Of Life

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.

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

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.

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.

Many Of Us Who Aren't Farmers Or Gardeners Still Have Some Element Of Farm Nostalgia In Our Family Past, Real Or Imagined: A Secret Longing For Some Connection To A Life Where A Rooster Crows In The Yard.

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

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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

April Is The Cruelest Month, T.s. Eliot Wrote, By Which I Think He Meant (among Other Things) That Springtime Makes People Crazy. We Expect Too Much, The World Burgeons With Promises It Can't Keep, All Passion Is Really A Setup, And We're Doomed To Get Our Hearts Broken Yet Again. I Agree, And Would Further Add: Who Cares? Every Spring I Go Out There Anyway, Around The Bend, Unconditionally. ... Come The End Of The Dark Days, I Am More Than Joyful. I'm Nuts.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

Friends, There Is Nothing Like Your Own Family To Make You Appreciate Strangers!

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

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

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

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.

I Think The Most Interesting Parts Of Human Experience Might Be The Sparks That Come From That Sort Of Chipping Flint Of Cultures Rubbing Against Each Other.

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

When I Look Out The Window, I Exhale A Prayer Of Thanks For The Color Green, For My Children's Safety, For The Simple Acts Of Faith Like Planting A Garden That Helped See Us Through Another Spring, Another Summer. And I Inhale Some Kind Of Promise To Protect My Kids' Hopes And Good Intentions We Began With In This Country. Freedom Of Speech, The Protection Of Diversity - These Are The Most Important Ingredients Of American Civil Life And My Own Survival. If I Ever Took Them For Granted, I Don't Know.

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

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

Giving Up On Love

Morning Always Comes.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I Grew Up Aware Of All The People I Depended On And Who Depended On Me.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

He Needs To Go Rub His Soul Against Life.

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

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.

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!

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

The Most Important Thing About A Person Is Always The Thing You Don't Know.

People's Dreams Are Made Out Of What They Do All Day. The Same Way A Dog That Runs After Rabbits Will Dream Of Rabbits. It's What You Do That Makes Your Soul, Not The Other Way Around.

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

Humans Can Be Fairly Ridiculous Animals.

To Think Is Not Always To See.

...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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

No Kind Of Bomb Ever Built Will Extinguish Hatred.

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.

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.

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.

...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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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)

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.

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

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.

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

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

This Forest Eats Itself And Lives Forever.

Loose Lips Sink Ships.

Trending Author

Olive Schreiner

Rafael Palmeiro

Camilo Jose Cela

Category