Background Image

...

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.

-Barbara Kingsolver

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

This Is How Moths

Barbara Kingsolver

...

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.

Views: 7

Topic

More From Barbara Kingsolver

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

Things You Love

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.

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

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Arguments Could Fill A Marriage Like Water, Running Through Everything, Always, With No Taste Or Color But Lots Of Noise.

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

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

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

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

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

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

No Kind Of Bomb Ever Built Will Extinguish Hatred.

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

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

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

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

Inspirational Life

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

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

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.

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?

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

High Fashion Has The Shelf Life Of Potato Salad. And When Past Its Prime, It Is Similarly Deadly.

But Children Robbed Of Love Will Dwell On Magic.

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.

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.

You Can Be As Earnest And Ridiculous As You Need To Be, If You Don't Attempt It In Isolation. The Ridiculously Earnest Are Known To Travel In Groups. And They Are Known To Change The World.

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.

What You Lose In Blindness Is The Space Around You, The Place Where You Are, And Without That You Might Not Exist. You Could Be Nowhere At All.

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.

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.

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

Our Plans Are Small And Somewhat Absurd.

I Made It To The Childbearing Phase Without Tv Dependence, Then Looked Around And Thought, Well Gee, Why Start Now? Why Get A Pet Python On The Day You Decide To Raise Fuzzy Little Gerbils?

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

Everything Truly Important Is Washable.

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.

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

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

Giving Up On Love

What We End Up Calling History Is A Kind Of Knife, Slicing Down Through Time. A Few People Are Hard Enough To Bend Its Edge. But Most Won't Even Stand Close To The Blade. I'm One Of Those. We Don't Bend Anything.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

For Scientists, Reality Is Not Optional.

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

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.

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

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

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.

...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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

The Truth Needs So Little Rehearsal.

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.

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.

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

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.

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!

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.

The Arrogance Of The Able-bodied Is Staggering. Yes, Maybe We'd Like To Be Able To Get Places Quickly, And Carry Things In Both Hands But Only Because We Have To Keep Up With The Rest Of You ... We Would Rather Be Just Like Us, And Have That Be All Right.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

The Very Least You Can Do In Your Life Is To Figure Out What You Hope For!

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.

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

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

People Read Books To Escape The Uncertainties Of Life.

Uncertainty Of Life

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.

Terms Like That, 'humane Society,' Are Devised With People Like Me In Mind, Who Don't Care To Dwell On What Happens To The Innocent.

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.

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

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.

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

Every Time I Step Onto An Airplane, I Turn To The Right And Take A Good, Hard Stare Into The Maw Of The Engine. I Don't Know What I'm Looking For. I Just Do It.

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.

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.

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

She's Never Forgotten, Either, How A Mystery Caught In The Hand Could Lose Its Grace

Loose Lips Sink Ships.

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.

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.

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

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.

The Past Is All We Know Of The Future.

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

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.

The Arc Of History Is Longer Than Human Vision. It Bends. We Abolished Slavery, We Granted Universal Suffrage. We Have Done Hard Things Before. And Every Time It Took A Terrible Fight Between People Who Could Not Imagine Changing The Rules, And Those Who Said, 'we Already Did. We Have Made The World New.' The Hardest Part Will Be To Convince Yourself Of The Possibilities, And Hang On.

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.

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.

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.

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.

It's A Funny Thing: People Often Ask How I Discipline Myself To Write. I Can't Begin To Understand The Question. For Me, The Discipline Is Turning Off The Computer And Leaving My Desk To Do Something Else.

What A Writer Can Do, What A Fiction Writer Or A Poet Or An Essay Writer Can Do Is Re-engage People With Their Own Humanity.

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

Sometimes The Strength Of Motherhood Is Greater Than Natural Laws.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

Downstream Is Always Someone Else's Up.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

It Is Harrowing For Me To Try To Teach 20-year-old Students, Who Earnestly Want To Improve Their Writing. The Best I Can Think To Tell Them Is: Quit Smoking, And Observe Posted Speed Limits. This Will Improve Your Odds Of Getting Old Enough To Be Wise.

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

I Don't Look Like Who I Am.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

I Wonder That Religion Can Live Or Die On The Strength Of A Faint, Stirring Breeze. The Scent Trail Shifts, Causing The Predator To Miss The Pounce. One God Draws In The Breath Of Life And Rises; Another God Expires.

Maybe Life Doesn't Get Any Better Than This, Or Any Worse, And What We Get Is Just What We're Willing To Find: Small Wonders, Where They Grow.

Fiction And Essays Can Create Empathy For The Theoretical Stranger.

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.

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

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

This Forest Eats Itself And Lives Forever.

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

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 Someone Does Learn About The World From Reading A Novel Of Mine, That Makes Me Very Happy. It's Probably Not What Brings Me Into The Novel In The First Place - I Usually Am Pulled In By Some Big Question About The World And Human Nature That I'm Not Going To Resolve In The Course Of The Novel. But I'm Very Devoted To Getting My Facts Straight.

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

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.

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.

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 Standard Approach Has Been To Pump Up The Dosage Of Chemicals ... Twenty Percent Of These Approved-for-use Pesticides Are Listed By The Epa As Carcinogenic In Humans.

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

The Happiest People Are The Ones With The Most Community.

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?

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.

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

Culture Is A Slingshot Moved By The Force Of Its Past

A Meaningless Phrase Repeated Again And Again Begins To Resemble Truth.

Again And Again

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.

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

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

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!

You Can Curse The Dead Or Pray For Them, But Don't Expect Them To Do A Thing For You. They're Far Too Interested In Watching Us, To See What In Heaven's Name We Will Do Next.

The Friend Who Holds Your Hand And Says The Wrong Thing Is Made Of Dearer Stuff Than The One Who Stays Away.

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

Trending Author

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Category