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b460c46
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Every Man has the Right to make a Kite from his Pants.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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36caffe
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How strange that a boy could make a kite of his pants, fly them around the world, and somehow arrive back at the house where everything began.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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cf144e9
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My stenographer would say, 'Fairly warned is fair afeared.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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5ccba69
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The devil here is a boy with too much imagination," he usually said."
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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c9f3a3c
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I went a day. Spent that evening standing at the window lighting one cigarette off the last, after she'd gone, to keep myself from sitting and writing out the scene as freshly recalled. One week, thirty packs of cigarettes. Weeks. Without spooling out more of a tale, creating more to burn, knitting away at the front of the long knotted scarf that will have to be unraveled at the back. How helpless I feel before this flood of words, how ridi..
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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007755c
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Enrique felt a successful man needed no imagination at all.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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b7547c0
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of people: if the shark comes, they will all escape, and leave you to be eaten.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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24f7a84
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A thousand fishes make the school, but they always move together: one great, bright, brittle altogetherness.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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93249d1
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doesn't seem to be so, as the wheels of Mexico creak forward on their slow revolution. Europe raises herself from the ash and holds out a hand to her poor and damaged. But if Truman calls for any change, education improvements, or Social Security, a chorus shouts him down: welfare state, collectivism, conspiracy. What an extraordinary state of things, we are the finished product. A rock thrown in the canyon rolls neither uphill or down, it'..
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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9bc435b
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The pale-skinned boy stood shivering in water up to his waist, thinking these were the most awful words in any language: You will be surprised. The moment when everything is about to change.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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93a9dc7
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But approaching mealtimes as a creative opportunity, rather than a chore, is an option.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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506ce41
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Well, that's how thick I am, I never knew how to want what everyone wants. I only thought to look for a home, some place to be taken in. Handing over a crumpled heart, seeing it dropped in the wastepaper basket every time. Here, though. Americans sent love letters in return.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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6ed93d7
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The dancers were butterflies. From a hundred paces Salome could see the dirt under these girls' fingernails, but not their wings.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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bf5b9e4
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Because what would be left, when all these books were in the past? He lay awake nights dreading it.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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fbefeb9
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There he'd found the pasteboard notebook: the most beautiful book ever, it could become anything.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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c751ffa
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The notebook from the tobacco stand was the beginning of hope: a prisoner's plan for escape. Its empty pages would be the book of everything, miraculous and unending like the sea at night, a heartbeat that never stops. Salome for her part was not worried about running out of books, only of having her clothes go out of fashion.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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3bcf64f
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quoting Diaz: "Only in her home, like a butterfly in a glass jar, can woman progress to her highest level of decency."
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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07350a8
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In the scullery kitchens and probably the salt mines of this world, many a child is not so much raised as hammered into shape, Artie. To be of use. Surviving by the grace of utility alone.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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0dc3cbf
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Oh, and the camel. Was it a camel that could pass through the eye of a needle more easily than a rich man? Or a coarse piece of yarn? The Hebrew words are the same, but which one did they mean? If it's a camel, the rich man might as well not even try. But if it's the yarn, he might well succeed with a lot of effort, you see?
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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21d91ea
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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.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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fef7050
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I am not sure how so many Americans came to believe only our wealthy are capable of honoring a food aesthetic.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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8dfe765
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For my part, I merely watched young, deprived female bosoms panting before my handsome husband, soldier of the Lord. (I longed to shout: Go ahead and try him, girls, I am too tired!)
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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21dc1a8
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Passing through every wall are electronic beams that create a shadow play of desire staged by the puppeteers of globalized commerce, who fund their advertising each year with more than a hundred dollars spent for this planet's every man, woman, child.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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886af30
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I am losing faith in such a simple thing as despising an enemy with unequivocal righteousness.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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a4867e8
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Can one who hates right govern?" Job 34:13,"
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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4e4db7b
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it. But when a man's words are taken from him and poisoned, it's the same as poisoning the man. He could not speak, for how his own tongue would be fouled. Words were his all. I felt I'd witnessed a murder, just as he'd seen his friend murdered in Mexico. Only this time they left the body living.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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957f456
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If it came to pass that Thatcher should shake hands with President Grant, as Polly predicted, he would still be a man who viewed life from the bottom of the ditch, not the top.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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8753bb2
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because it takes your sleeping self years to catch up to where you really are. Pay attention to your dreams: when you go on a trip, in your dreams you will still be home. Then after you've come home you'll dream of where you were. It's a kind of jet lag of the consciousness.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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7821e8c
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With that one little booklet put back in place, it came as a different story. Because of that burrow through rock and water--lacuna, he called it. This time I read with a different heart, understanding the hero would still be standing at journey's end. Or at least, live or die, he'd known of a chance and aimed to take it.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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316003b
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If God speaks for the man who keeps quiet, then Violet Brown may be His instrument.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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d4f82cc
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Well, my stars, the thing was like the Bible--look hard enough in its pages, and you'll find what you seek. Love your neighbor, or slay him with the jawbone of an ass.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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b731519
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Zola wrote that the mendacity of the press could be divided into two groups: the yellow press lies every day without hesitating. But others, like the Times, speak the truth on all inconsequential occasions, so they can deceive the public with the requisite authority when it becomes necessary.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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b5c1beb
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To live is to change, to acquire the words of a story...
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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6e0cae6
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Freedom of the presses to destroy a person's life for no good reason." (Lacuna, p. 419)"
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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c8e88a8
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No matter what affronts of youthful insolence he had to face in his day, he'd still have that: he was a man taken care of by a woman.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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ff59687
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Plus," Tig said, "it reminds me to be patient. Seeing all these people that have passed on. I get frustrated sometimes, waiting.""For people to die?""Yeah. To be honest. 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...
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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fce75f3
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Even this far inland, New Jersey was still recovering from Hurricane Sandy, which in its time, a few years back, had been called the storm of the century. How foolish it seemed now to label anything "of the century." This one was still a teenager with an anger-management problem and a long future ahead."
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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a004e1b
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shambles in her sternum.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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99ea266
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bare wood of her son beneath the bark
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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8b70f4f
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dandling
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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b9f6c4f
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brain salts
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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ca5ba41
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But Pascal quickly forgave me, and it's a good thing, since friends of my own age and gender were not available, the girls of Kilanga all being too busy hauling around firewood, water, or babies. It did cross my mind to wonder why Pascal had the freedom to play and roam that his sisters didn't. While the little boys ran around pretending to shoot each other and fall dead in the road, it appeared that little girls were running the country.
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life-and-living
gender
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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de4ebab
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I see books as windows out of a little life into the great world." "Writing fiction is a dance. It's controlled lunacy. Hearing voices in your head -- they give people drugs for that."
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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ec4bdfe
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And my husband, why, hell hath no fury like a Baptist preacher.
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poisonwood-bible
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Barbara Kingsolver |