01c. 1955 ADLike many human beings, he took the least sign of conversation as his cue to make noise.Barbara Kingsolver / quote ↗
02c. 1955 ADA 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.Barbara Kingsolver / quote ↗
03c. 1955 ADYou see mother, you had no life of your own. They have no idea. One has only a life of one's own.Barbara Kingsolver / quote ↗
04c. 1955 ADBut if we can't summon the empathy to imagine what our dead would have asked of us, or the selflessness to give it, then we must accept the desperately sad verdict that each generation's hopes will die with it, and no cumulative progress is possible for the human will.Barbara Kingsolver / quote ↗
05c. 1955 ADFor 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.Barbara Kingsolver / quote ↗
06c. 1955 ADShe has changed in this way that motherhood changes you, so that you forget you ever had time for small things like despising the color pink.Barbara Kingsolver / quote ↗
07c. 1955 ADThat means you're my kid," I explained, "and I'm your mother, and nobody can say it isn't so.Barbara Kingsolver / quote ↗
08c. 1955 ADBut I'll tell you a secret. When I want to take God at his word exactly I take a peep out the window at His Creation. Because that, darling, He makes fresh for us every day, without a lot of dubious middle managers.Barbara Kingsolver / quote ↗
09c. 1955 ADSome of life's greatest calls were answered not by the head but by the body.Barbara Kingsolver / quote ↗
10c. 1955 ADThis will be Great Mam's last spring. Her last June apples. Her last fresh roasting ears from the garden.Barbara Kingsolver / quote ↗
11c. 1955 ADLike kids who only ever get socks for Christmas, but still believe with all their hearts in Santa.Barbara Kingsolver / quote ↗
12c. 1955 ADEvery betrayal contains a perfect moment, a coin stamped heads or tails with salvation on the other side. Betrayal is a friend I have known a long time, a two-faced goddess looking forward and back with a clear, earnest suspicion of good fortune.Barbara Kingsolver / quote ↗
13c. 1955 ADA dog can’t think that much about what he’s doing, he just does what feels right.Barbara Kingsolver / quote ↗
14c. 1955 ADEach food items in a typical U.S. meal has traveled an average of 1,500 miles....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.Barbara Kingsolver / quote ↗
15c. 1955 ADI know what it is: it's a green mamba snake away up in the tree. You don't have to be afraid of them anymore because you are one. They lie so still on the tree branch; they are the same everything as the tree. You could be right next to one and not even know. It's so quiet there. That's just exactly what I want to go and be, when I have to disappear. Your eyes will be little and round but you are so far up there you can look down and see the whole world, Mama and everybody. The tribes of Ham, Shem, and Japheth all together. Finally you are the highest one of all.Barbara Kingsolver / quote ↗
16c. 1955 AD...when the public nerve is aroused, the most impressive capacity of man is his skill for lying.Barbara Kingsolver / quote ↗
17c. 1955 ADA journalist's job is to collect information," Ovid said to Pete. "Nope," Pete said. "That's what we do. It's not what they do." Dellarobia was unready to be pushed out of the conversation just like that. "Then what do you think the news people drive their Jeeps all the way out here for?" "To shore up the prevailing view of their audience and sponsors." "Pete takes a dim view of his fellow humans," Ovid said. "He prefers insects. Dellarobia turned her chair halfway around to face Pete, scraping noisily against the cement floor. "You're saying people only tune in to news they know they're going to agree with?" "Bingo," said Pete.Barbara Kingsolver / quote ↗
18c. 1955 ADWell, the ancients might not have been very heroic. Most of them were probably like Mother, crouched somewhere trying to work out how to make fake jawbone jewelry that would look like the real thing.Barbara Kingsolver / quote ↗
19c. 1955 ADShe watched the dark highway and entertained me with her vegetable-soup song, except that now there were people mixed in with the beans and potatoes: Dwayne Ray, Mattie, Esperanza, Lou Ann and all the rest. And me. I was the main ingredient.Barbara Kingsolver / quote ↗
20c. 1955 ADMost of them don't know what communism is, could not pick it out of a lineup. They only know what anticommunism is. The two are practically unrelated.Barbara Kingsolver / quote ↗
21c. 1955 ADLife proceeds, it enrages. The untouched ones spend their luck without a thought, believing they deserve it.Barbara Kingsolver / quote ↗
22c. 1955 ADIllusions mistaken for truth are the pavement under our feet. They are what we call civilization.Barbara Kingsolver / quote ↗
23c. 1955 ADThe urge to lie is produced by the contradictions in our lives. We are made to declare love for our country, while it tramples our rights and dignity.Barbara Kingsolver / quote ↗
24c. 1955 ADWell, yeah," Dovey said. "That's America. We watch shows about rich people's houses and their designer dresses and we drool. It's patriotic.Barbara Kingsolver / quote ↗
