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9b82293
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I thought I'd had a pretty hard life. But I keep finding out that life can be hard in ways I never knew about.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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73aaa5a
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The thing is, Mom, the secret of happiness is low expectations. That's a good reminder, right there. If you didn't lose your husband and kids all in one year, smile! You're ahead of the game.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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1b3f3fb
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We are bodies, sometimes with dreams and always with desires.
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dreams
desire
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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bb547ab
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A person can succeed and fail at the same time. Maybe letting me down was your way of getting me to be me.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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05fc057
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When my generation of women walked away from the kitchen we were escorted down that path by a profiteering industry that knew a tired, vulnerable marketing target when they saw it. "Hey, ladies," it said to us, "go ahead, get liberated. We'll take care of dinner." They threw open the door and we walked into a nutritional crisis and genuinely toxic food supply. If you think toxic is an exaggeration, read the package directions for handling r..
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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89715a6
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Lusa turned to Crys, her eyes shining. "That was a luna." Crys shrugged. "So?" "So? So what? You want it should sing, too?"
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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8354103
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She'd heard theories in her time regarding the number-one enemy of everything, ranging from Osama bin Laden to premarital sex. The dust theory she liked.
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theory-of-everything
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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f255cf2
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she considered a language that could carry nothing but love and simple truth.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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62a72d0
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And you came over to make sure I was all right, is that what you're telling me? You came over here with your shotgun to protect me from my scarecrow?" "I had to," Garnett said, spreading his hands, throwing himself on her mercy. "I didn't care for the way Buddy was looking at you in your short pants."
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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f842fd9
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Unsheltered, I live in daylight. And like the wandering bird I rest in thee.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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2956b98
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We cater to the better class of gentile clientele. We reserve the right to decline service to anyone we deem to be incompatible.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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43d6cf9
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Oh, America the Beautiful, where are our standards? How did Europeans, ancestral cultures to most of us, whose average crowded country would fit inside one of our national parks, somehow hoard the market share of Beautiful? They'll run over a McDonald's with a bulldozer because it threatens the way of life of their fine cheeses. They have international trade hissy fits when we try to slip modified genes into their bread. They get their favo..
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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71326eb
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A territory is only possessed for a moment in time.
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time
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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d3143fa
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If people really gave it full consideration, I mean, like if you could return a baby after thirty days' examination like one of those Time-Life books, then I figure the entire human species would go extinct in a month's time.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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0b34c64
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I do understand that they fall when I'm least able to pay attention because poems fall not from a tree, really, but from the richly pollinated boughs of an ordinary life, buzzing, as lives do, with clamor and glory. They are easy to miss but everywhere: poetry just is, whether we revere it or try to put it in prison. It is elementary grace, communicated from one soul to another.
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poems
poetry
life
grace
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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60e8b4d
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She made it plain that her fondest wish was to have a grandbaby. Whenever fat Irene would pick up the baby, which was not too often, Mrs. Hoge would declare, "Irene, you don't know how becoming that looks." As if someone ought to have a kid because it looked good on them." --
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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b36c7a5
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Here, bodily damage is more or less considered to be a by-product of living, not a disgrace.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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5e2b877
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She looked like Cinderella in reverse, stepped out from her life at the ball for a day of misery among the ashes.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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478fdbb
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How would you even begin to make a hush puppy, what in the world was in one? Nothing to do with a puppy, surely. Garnett had long known, though he didn't much like to admit it, that God's world and the better part of daily life were full of mysteries known only to women.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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d6459d7
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Anatole has been explaining to me the native system of government. He says the business of throwing pebbles into bowls with the most pebbles winning an election--that was Belgium's idea of fair play, but to people here it was peculiar. To the Congolese (including Anatole himself, he confessed) it seems odd that if one man gets fifty votes and the other gets forty-nine, the first one wins altogether and the second one plumb loses. That means..
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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a42e94b
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Which makes you wonder, are they really speaking real words or do little kids just start out naturally understanding each other before the prime of life sets in?
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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f98ff6b
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So Noah cursed all Ham's children to be slaves forever and ever. That's how come them to turn out dark
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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3e3ecfe
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The clock gulps softly, eating second whole while she waits...
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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fa0487d
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A 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. Della..
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news
media
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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4ca095b
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We were not made for this killing thing, I swear. Back up. Big mistake.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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3a8ed67
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Already? How can this be?" I would ask, shattered by the terrible truth that I needed a three-ring binder and some #2 pencils. It's not that school was a bad thing. Summer was just so much better."
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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8105cbb
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This was a living flow, like a pulse through veins, with the cells bursting and renewing themselves as they went. The sudden vision filled her with strong emotions that embarrassed her, for fear of breaking into sobs as she had in front of her in-laws that day when the butterflies enveloped her. How was that even normal, to cry over insects?
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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0885d88
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Being a peacock is not the only way to hide yourself, Frida. A pigeon can hide.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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8c05755
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Think of all the duties that were perfectly obvious to Paul or Matthew in that old Arabian desert that are pure nonsense to us now. All that foot washing, for example. Was it really for God's glory or just to keep the sand out of the house?
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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9f9d4b4
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Modern US consumers now get to taste less than 1 percent of the vegetable varieties that were grown here a century ago. Those old-timers now lurk only in backyard gardens and on farms that specialize in direct sales--if they survive at all. Many heirlooms have been lost entirely.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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e6575fe
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GM [genetically modified] plants are virtually everywhere in the US food chain, but don't have to be labeled, and aren't. Industry lobbyists intend to keep it that way.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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cb94ff1
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Why does a person spend money on a stamp to spout bile at a stranger?
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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fa21c91
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War is the supreme mathematics problem. It strains our skulls, yet we work out the sums, believing we have pressed the most monstrous quantities into a balanced equation
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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e1fa477
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You knew me well enough to find me here,' she said. And his scent burst onto her brain like a rain of lights, and his voice reached across the distance without words: 'I've always known you that well.' He wrapped her in his softness, touched her face with the movement of trees and the odor of wild water over stones, dissolving her need in the confidence of his embrace.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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58bf2d4
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Every few weeks I get a letter from Leopoldville, which holds me on track. My heart races when I see the long blue envelope in a sister's hand, delivered to me under her sleeve as if a man himself were inside. And, oh, he is! Still sweet and bitter and wise and, best of all, still alive. I squeal, I can't help it, and run outside to the courtyard to taste him in private like a cat with a stolen pullet. I lean my face against the cool wall a..
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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7df4d83
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I almost never respect men. They're like flowers -- all show, a lot of color and lust. You pick them and throw them on the ground.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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51c944f
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Remember how we use to pray to get invited to birthday parties? And they only asked us because we were so grateful we'd do anything, stay late and help the mothers wash the cake pans. I'm still that girl, flattered to death if somebody wants me around.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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b8a6f6d
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A disappointed-looking Jesus eyed her from the wall...Look, look, her steps called out, here is a red headed sinner on the move.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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5ab9086
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The color brown, I realized, is anything but nondescript. It comes in as many hues as there are colors of earth, with is commonly presumed infinite.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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a066235
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Cub had puffed up like a rooster when the article came out, taking it in to show the guys at the gravel company. He was impressed with all the celebrity in equal measure, the type of kid who had cut out pictures of football players, Jesus, and America's Most Wanted to tape on his bedroom wall. He'd confessed to having cried in sixth grade when he learned that superheroes weren't real. Dellarobia was his Wonder Woman. But Hester seemed incen..
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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f0c1816
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Parenting is something that happens mostly while you're thinking of something else.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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65cd6ee
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I've just fallen on some bad luck and landed jelly side down.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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eae2971
|
She is too absorbed in the difficulties of being seventeen to want to hear the confusions of forty-four.
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youth
|
Barbara Kingsolver |
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6822adb
|
Do not expect God's protection in places beyond God's dominion. It will only make you feel punished. I'm warning you. When things go badly, you will blame yourself.
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Barbara Kingsolver |