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e51ed4a
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What there is in this world, I think, is a tendency for human errors to level themselves like water throughout their sphere of influence. That's pretty much the whole of what I can say, looking back. There's the possibility of balance. Unbearable burdens that the world somehow does bear with a certain grace.
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human-error
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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172586d
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All that hurry can blur the truth that life is a zero-sum equation. Every minute I save will get used on something else, possibly no more sublime than staring at the newel post trying to remember what I just ran upstairs for.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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e476f62
|
They count that as your birthday -- the day your mother gets up." "Not the day you were born?" Not the day you came out. They count the mother getting better as all part of the birth."
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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6a5b2d2
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If you can't live by the laws the LORD God made for the world, they'll go into effect regardless.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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05c84a4
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the houses all seemed a little senile, with arthritc hinges and window screens hanging at embarrassing angles.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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b53b4ba
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She climbs down and pours half an inch of Jim Beam into a Bengals mug that came free with a tank of gas. Alice would just as soon get her teeth cleaned as watch the Bengals. That's the price of staying around when your heart's not in it, she thinks. You get to be cheerleader for a sport you never chose.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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b2d4517
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Here comes Moses tromping down off Mount Syanide with ten fresh ways to wreck your life.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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9731006
|
Oh, man, don't get me started on the subject of childhood brainwash. I hate that. Every fairy story, every Disney movie, every plot with animals in it, the bad guy is always the top carnivore. Wolf, grizzly, anaconda, Tyrannosaurus rex.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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2c08088
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It is impossible to describe the shock of return. I recall that I stood for the longest time staring at a neatly painted yellow line on a neatly formed cement curb. Yellow yellow line line. I pondered the human industry, the paint, the cement truck and concrete forms, all the resources that had gone into that one curb. For what? I could not quite think of the answer. So that no car would park there? Are there so many cars that America must ..
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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2c4d923
|
A million dead butterflies, she said. Sorry as hell they ever landed here.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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07423de
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We can't know what we haven't been taught
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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976ad87
|
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.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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2e71a96
|
I'll never get over my grappling for balance, never stop believing life is going to be , the minute we can clear up all these mistakes of the temporarily misguided.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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f1512a1
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Carlo is safe because I don't really love him that much. If he stopped wanting me around one day, it wouldn't be so terrible. I wouldn't die. Hallie, I realize how that sounds. I feel small and ridiculous and hemmed in on every side by the need to be safe. All I want is to be like you, to walk into a country of chickens and land mines and call that home, and have it be home. How do you just charge ahead, always doing the right thing, even i..
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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d145fbf
|
Sometimes that happens. Children can be your heartache. But that doesn't matter, you have to go on and have them," she said. "It works out." --
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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00cb376
|
so he just stood there brewing like a coffeepot. Only with a coffeepot you know exactly what's going to come out of it.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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3d9ed09
|
I had just dropped out of medicine in my first year of residency, a few months shy of becoming a licensed M.D. I'd discovered there was something serious, mainly a matter of nerve and perhaps empathy, that stood in my way.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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247fb8e
|
always tried to be positive with her, although I'd learned
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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64d4a81
|
When he marched to the altar, all the women in smart hats leaned away from the aisle, their long strands of pearls all swaying to one side as if the deck of a ship listed beneath them.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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21045c4
|
You learn to read so you can identify the reality in which you live, so that you can become a protagonist history rather than a spectator" Father Fernando Cardenal"
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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e062ee4
|
Illusions mistaken for truth are the pavement under our feet. They are what we call civilization.
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truth
illusions
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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131e733
|
This will be Great Mam's last spring. Her last June apples. Her last fresh roasting ears from the garden.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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9e890b5
|
Food transport has become a bizarre and profitable economic equation that's no longer really about feeding anyone: in our own nation we export 1.1 million tons of potatoes, while we also import 1.4 million tons.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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33caa5c
|
It is true I do not speak as well as I can think. But that is true of most people, as nearly as I can tell.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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5c8112c
|
The Pueblo story is that everyone started out underground. People and animals, everything. And then the badger dug a hole and let everybody out. They climbed out the hole and from then on they lived on top of the ground. When they die they go back under. [...] 'I always try to think of it that way,' he said, after a minute. "He had a big adventure up here, and then went home."
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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7a744cd
|
If you go to visit hell, you will see a room like this kitchen. There is a pot of delicious stew on the table, with the most delicate aroma you can imagine. All around, people sit, like us. Only they are dying of starvation. They are jibbering and jabbering," he looked extra hard at Mrs. Parsons, "but they cannot get a bite of this wonderful stew God has made for them. Now, why is that?" "Because they're choking? For all eternity?" Lou Ann ..
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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49a1b0f
|
In Bobby Ogle's version of heaven everyone would wind up in one place, criminals and Muslims included.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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57c8a10
|
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.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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b9d4c18
|
He asked me if the alligator was a national symbol of the United States, because you saw them everywhere on people's shirts, just above the heart.
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immigrants
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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0e7f90b
|
The flatness was stultifying. She wouldn't say this aloud because in light of other worries it seemed self-indulgent, but Willa missed mountains. Missed them hard, with the psychic equivalent of a toothache.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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bb82b21
|
A mother's unfulfilled ambitions lie heaviest on her daughters.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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730ef05
|
They rock against each other, holding on, and the birds in the forest raise their voices to drown out the secret of creation.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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3278c94
|
Oh, whatever would I do without my child-progeny sister to tell me what to do." "Prodigy," I corrected."
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rachel-price
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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2dca73e
|
The traffic was moving about the speed of a government
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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3f05c68
|
Don Enrique says a full moon pulls up the highest tides of the month, at midday and midnight. And it pulls them down to their lowest ebb when it is rising or setting. So says a man in a frock coat and breeches who, if he tried to row a boat, would fall out instantly and drown. But Leandro said the same thing about the moon and high tide, so it might be true. How can you know if the moon is going toward full, or disappearing? This evening th..
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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afb4276
|
Thatcher thought Mary was not invisible, but as free as any woman could be. And in the grip of fresh discoveries, always.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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ae0be28
|
The guys in charge of everything right now are so old. They really are, Mom. Older than you. They figured out the meaning of life in, I guess, the nineteen fifties and sixties. When it looked like there would always be plenty of everything. And they're applying that to now. It's just so ridiculous.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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6710040
|
After a while Estevan said, "What I really hate is not belonging in any place. To be unwanted everywhere."
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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5e9d603
|
Conquest and liberation and democracy 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.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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81c18ff
|
A delicate business, telling the truth. So long as Landis writes a happier falsehood for these men to tell themselves, they can believe in opportunity. They are the nearly rich,
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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25b43a5
|
There were two things about Mama. One is she always expected the best out of me. And the other is that then no matter what I did, whatever I came home with, she acted like it was the moon I had just hung up in the sky and plugged in all the stars. Like I was that good.
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|
Barbara Kingsolver |
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390cf1f
|
You learn to read so you can identify the reality in which you live, so that you can become a protagonist of history rather than a spectator.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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3252b2f
|
There are Christians, and there are Christians.
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|
Barbara Kingsolver |
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f3059a5
|
You can't just sashay into the jungle aiming to change it all over to the Christian style, without expecting the jungle to change you right back.
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|
Barbara Kingsolver |