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2cdcfd0
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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.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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8bb55ee
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Humans can be fairly ridiculous animals.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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65a685b
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The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof. What I want is so simple I almost can't say it: elementary kindness. Enough to eat, enough to go around. The possibility that kids might one day grow up to be neither the destroyers nor the destroyed. That's about it. Right now I'm living in that hope..
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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aa8e8a4
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I lost a child," she said, meeting Lusa's eyes directly. "I thought I wouldn't live through it. But you do. You learn to love the place somebody leaves behind for you."
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loss
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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94cafd2
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If you never stepped on anybody's toes, you never been for a walk.
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tact
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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65eb20b
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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.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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72cc562
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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.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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0373f55
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Now I'm starting to think he wasn't supposed to be my whole life, he was just this doorway to me.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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f7a898d
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Every life is different because you passed this way and touched history. Even the child Ruth May touched history. Everyone is complicit. The okapi complied by living, and the spider by dying. It would have lived if it could. Listen: being dead is not worse than being alive. It is different, though. You could say the view is larger.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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349317a
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Last time I talked to her she didn't sound like herself. She's depressed. It's awful what happens when people run out of money. They start thinking they're no good.
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poverty
self-esteem
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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050493f
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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.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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a13ef17
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Oh, mercy. If it catches you in the wrong frame of mind, the King James Bible can make you want to drink poison in no uncertain terms.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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e28fc31
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Sadness is more or less like a head cold - with patience, it passes. Depression is like cancer.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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acf933f
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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...
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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713480c
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But his kind will always lose in the end. I know this, and now I know why. Whether it's wife or nation they occupy, their mistake is the same: they stand still, and their stake moves underneath them.... Chains rattle, rivers roll, animals startle and bolt, forests inspire and expand, babies stretch open-mouthed from the womb, new seedlings arch their necks and creep forward into the light. Even a language won't stand still. A territory is o..
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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454fc9e
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Households that have lost the soul of cooking from their routines may not know what they are missing: the song of a stir-fry sizzle, the small talk of clinking measuring spoons, the yeasty scent of rising dough, the painting of flavors onto a pizza before it slides into the oven.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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9d16279
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Cooking is 80 percent confidence, a skill best acquired starting from when the apron strings wrap around you twice.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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29fe066
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A choir of seedlings arching their necks out of rotted tree stumps, sucking life out of death. I am the forest's conscience, but remember, the forest eats itself and lives forever.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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c99161f
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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.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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7dd0271
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If the Lord hasn't got a boyfriend lined up for me to marry, that's his business.
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poisonwood-bible
humor
love
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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7255289
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I had decided early on that if I couldn't dress elegant, I'd dress memorable.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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c77a5af
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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.
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self-righteousness
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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7f75162
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Honk if you love Jesus, text while driving if you want to meet up.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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b804d55
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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 bir..
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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e4e56c8
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I thought I wouldn't live through it. But you do. You learn to love the place somebody leaves behind for you.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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45c08e9
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nothing momentous comes in this world unless it comes on the shoulders of kindness.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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5e789da
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Shoes would interfere with her conversation, for she constantly addresses the ground under her feet. Asking forgiveness. Owning, disowning, recanting, recharting a hateful course of events to make sense of her complicity. We all are, I suppose. Trying to invent our version of the story. All human odes are essentially one, "My life; what I stole from history, and how I live with it."
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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0cc3ac4
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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.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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fde3cc8
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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 ..
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mediterranean
italy
food
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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79ebba3
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I thought: this is how life is, ridiculous beyond comprehension.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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dc0362e
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Cooking without remuneration" and "slaving over a hot stove" are activities separated mostly by a frame of mind. The distinction is crucial. Career women in many countries still routinely apply passion to their cooking, heading straight from work to the market to search out the freshest ingredients, feeding their loved ones with aplomb. [...] Full-time homemaking may not be an option for those of us delivered without trust funds into the mo..
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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950c80d
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No matter what kind of night you're having, morning always wins.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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99efb1c
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Value is not made of money, but a tender balance of expectation and longing.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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d5dce1f
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the conspicuous consumption of limited resources has yet to be accepted widely as a spiritual error, or even bad manners
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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6ab4328
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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.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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a4ca034
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This Forest eats itself and lives forever.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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24302eb
|
So you make this deal with the gods. You do these dances and they'll send rain and good crops and the whole works? And nothing bad will ever happen. Right.' Prayer had always struck me as more or less a glorified attempt at a business transaction. A rain dance even more so. I thought I might finally have offended Loyd past the point of no return, like stealing the lobster from frozen foods that time, to get myself fired. But Loyd was just t..
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prayer
religion
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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86b899e
|
Every life is different because you passed this way and touched history.
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life-and-living
life-lessons
philosophy
life-experience
|
Barbara Kingsolver |
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45f76a2
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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.
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love
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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72c1ff3
|
For if there is any single thing that everyone hopes for most dearly, it must be this: that the youngest outlive the oldest.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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f98808e
|
Poor Congo, barefoot bride of men who took her jewels and promised the Kingdom.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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6718861
|
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 sti..
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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0dc9652
|
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.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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df481fa
|
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"
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Barbara Kingsolver |