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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.

-Barbara Kingsolver

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You Always Need That

Barbara Kingsolver

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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.

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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.

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

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."

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

Our House Is Like An Empty Cigarette Packet, Lying Around Reminding You What's Not In It.

Memory Runs Along Deep, Fixed Channels In The Brain, Like Electricity Along Its Conduits; Only A Cataclysm Can Make The Electrons Rear Up In Shock And Slide Over Into Another Channel. The Human Mind Seems Doomed To Believe, As Simply As A Rooster Believes, That Where We Are Now Is The Only Possibility

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.

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

Controversial Topics

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.

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.

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.

Food Culture In The United States Has Long Been Cast As The Property Of A Privileged Class. It Is Nothing Of The Kind. Culture Is The Property Of A Species.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Independence Is A Complex Word In A Foreign Tongue. To Resist Occupation, Whether You're A Nation Or Merely A Woman, You Must Understand The Language Of Your Enemy. Conquest And Liberation And Democrac And Divorce Are Words That Mean Squat, Basically, When You Have Hungry Children And Clothes To Get Out On The Line And It Looks Like Rain.

The Reason Most People Have Kids Is Because They Get Pregnant.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

If It's Important, Your Heart Remembers.

I Prefer To Remain Anomalous.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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)

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

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

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

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.

But Kids Don't Stay With You If You Do It Right. It's The One Job Where, The Better You Are, The More Surely You Won't Be Needed In The Long Run.

But Children Robbed Of Love Will Dwell On Magic.

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.

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.

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

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.

Time Cures You First, And Then It Kills You.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

People Ask Without Wanting To Know.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

Insomnia’s Different,” I Said. It Was Hard To Explain This To People. “you Know The Light That Comes On When You Open The Refrigerator Door? Just Imagine It Stays On All The Time, Even After You Close The Door. That’s What It’s Like In My Head. The Light Stays On.

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Culture Is A Slingshot Moved By The Force Of Its Past

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

What Keeps You Going Isn't Some Fine Destination But Just The Road You're On, And The Fact That You Know How To Drive. You Keep Your Eyes Open, You See This Damned-to-hell World You Got Born Into, And You Ask Yourself, 'what Life Can I Live That Will Let Me Breathe In & Out And Love Somebody Or Something And Not Run Off Screaming Into The Woods?

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

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.

I Had Decided Early On That If I Couldn’t Dress Elegant, I’d Dress Memorable.

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.

People Read Books To Escape The Uncertainties Of Life.

Uncertainty Of Life

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.

For Scientists, Reality Is Not Optional.

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

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.

If You Can't Dress Expensive, Dress Memorable.

Nine-tenths Of Human Law Is About Possession.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

Like Daniel She Enteres The Lions' Den, But Lacking Daniel's Pure And Unblemished Soul, Ada Is Spiced With The Flavors Of Vice That Make For A Tasty Meal. Pure And Unblemished Souls Must Taste Very Bland, With An Aftertaste Of Bitterness.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Giving Up On Love

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Memories Do Not Always Soften With Time; Some Grow Edges Like Knives.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

Ah, The Mysterious Croak. Here Today, Gone Tomorrow. It's The Best Reason I Can Think Of To Throw Open The Blinds And Risk Belief. Right Now, This Minute, Time To Move Out Into The Grief And Glory. High Tide.

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.

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

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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.

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

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.

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?

Organization Is The Religion Of The Single Parent.

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.

I Attempted Briefly To Consecrate Myself In The Public Library, Believing Every Crack In My Soul Could Be Chinked With A Book.

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

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

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

A Mother's Body Remembers Her Babies-the Folds Of Soft Flesh, The Softly Furred Scalp Against Her Nose. Each Child Has It's Own Entreaties To Body And Soul.

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.

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.

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

Fiction And Essays Can Create Empathy For The Theoretical Stranger.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

He Was Getting That Look He Gets, Oh Boy, Like Here Comes Moses Tromping Down Off Of Mount Syanide With Ten Fresh Ways To Wreck Your Life.

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

I Don't Look Like Who I Am.

But I've Swallowed My Pride Before, That's For Sure. I'm Practically Lined With My Mistakes On The Inside Like A Bad-wallpapered Bathroom.

A Writer's Occupational Hazard: I Think Of Eavesdropping As Minding My Business.

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.

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

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?

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

Again And Again

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Sometimes The Strength Of Motherhood Is Greater Than Natural Laws.

It's Tough To Break Yourself As News To A Town That Already Knows You.

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

It's Very Important To Distinguish Between Innocence And Naivete. The Innocent Do Not Deserve To Be The Victims Of Violence. But Only The Naive Refuse To Think About The Origins Of Violence And To Pursue The Possibility That The Genesis Of That Hatred Could Be Addressed.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

Limited Resources

He Was My Father. I Own Half His Genes, And All Of His History. Believe This: The Mistakes Are Part Of The Story. I Am Born Of A Man Who Believed He Could Tell Nothing But The Truth, While He Set Down For All Time The Poisonwood Bible.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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Joseph De Maistre

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