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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.

-Barbara Kingsolver

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There Were Two Things

Barbara Kingsolver

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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.

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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.

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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.

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

Limited Resources

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

For Scientists, Reality Is Not Optional.

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

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

Everything Truly Important Is Washable.

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Loose Lips Sink Ships.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

We're Surrounded By Mandates, And I Believe That Literature Should Be Mandate-free. I Feel Very Strongly About That.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

The Truth Needs So Little Rehearsal.

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

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.

... 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.

You Know Reviewers, They Are The Wind In Their Own Sails.

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.

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.

Morning Always Comes.

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.

The Past Is All We Know Of The Future.

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.

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.

To Think Is Not Always To See.

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

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

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