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aec305f
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Friends, there is nothing like your own family to make you appreciate strangers!
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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287b03e
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We came from Bethlehem, Georgia bearing Betty Crocker cake mixes into the jungle.
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georgia
missionaries
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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7c7adaf
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you can't really know the person standing before you, because always there is some missing piece
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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3e6d351
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Why do you suppose the poets talk about hearts?' he asked me suddenly. 'When they discuss emotional damage? The tissue of hearts is tough as a shoe. Did you ever sew up a heart?' I shook my head. 'No, but I've watched. I know what you mean.' The walls of a heart are thick and strong, and the surgeons use heavy needles. It takes a good bit of strength, but it pulls together neatly. As much as anything it's like binding a book.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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5032ba3
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A mother's body remembers her babies--the folds of soft flesh, the softly furred scalp against her nose. Each child has its own entreaties to body and soul. It's the last one, though, that overtakes you. I can't dare say I loved the others less, but my first three were all babies at once, and motherhood dismayed me entirely. . . . That's how it is with the firstborn, no matter what kind of mother you are--rich, poor, frazzled half to death ..
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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bc33a0f
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You're asking yourself, Can I give this child the best possible upbringing and keep her out of harm's way her whole life long? The answer is no, you can't. But nobody else can either. Not a state home, that's for sure. For heaven's sake, the best they can do is turn their heads while the kids learn to pick locks and snort hootch, and then try to keep them out of jail. Nobody can protect a child from the world. That's why it's the wrong thin..
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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1c2d060
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Will you explain to me why people encourage delusional behaviour in children, and medicate it in adults?
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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9e566fb
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That was when we smelled the rain. It was so strong it seemed like more than just a smell. When we stretched out our hands we could practically feel it rising up from the ground. I don't know how a person could ever describe that scent.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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5ecb0c0
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The arrogance of the able-bodied is staggering. Yes, maybe we'd like to be able to get places quickly, and carry things in both hands, but only because we have to keep up with the rest of you. We would rather be just like , and have that be all right.
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disabilities
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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7c1f185
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Our holiday food splurge was a small crate of tangerines, which we found ridiculously thrilling after an eight-month abstinence from citrus.... Lily hugged each one to her chest before undressing it as gently as a doll. Watching her do that as she sat cross-legged on the floor one morning in pink pajamas, with bliss lighting her cheeks, I thought: Lucky is the world, to receive this grateful child. Value is not made of money, but a tender b..
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gratitude
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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edea741
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But children robbed of love will dwell on magic.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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656dde5
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Maybe he's been in Africa so long he has forgotten that we Christians have our own system of marriage, and it is called Monotony.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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3e32bf0
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You can curse the dead or pray for them, but don't expect them to do a thing for you. They're far too interested in watching us, to see what in heaven's name we will do next.
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prayer
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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dbf9556
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Mistakes wreck your life. But they make what you have. It's kind of all one. You know what Hester told me when we were working the sheep one time? She said it's no good to complain about your flock, because it's the put-together of all your past choices.
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life
mistakes
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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66c4b93
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You see mother, you had no life of your own. They have no idea. One has only a life of one's own.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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9094055
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Science doesn't tell us what we should do. It only tells us what is.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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365a96d
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Tall and straight I may appear, but I will always be Ada inside. A crooked little person trying to tell the truth. The power is in the balance: we are our injuries, as much as we are our successes
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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de34b5a
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How is it right to slip free of an old skin and walk away from the scene of the crime? We came, we saw, we took away and we left behind, we must be allowed our anguish and our regrets.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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0ecb12f
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You force people to stop asking questions, and before you know it they have auctioned off the question mark, or sold it for scrap. No boldness. No good ideas for fixing what's broken in the land. Because if you happen to mention it's broken, you are automatically disqualified.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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57eff43
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Maybe life doesn't get any better than this, or any worse, and what we get is just what we're willing to find: small wonders, where they grow.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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25d30d4
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You're thinking of revolution as a great all-or-nothing. I think of it as one more morning in a muggy cotton field, checking the undersides of leaves to see what's been there, figuring out what to do that won't clear a path for worse problems next week. Right now that's what I do. You ask why I'm not afraid of loving and losing, and that's my answer. Wars and elections are both too big and too small to matter in the long run. The daily work..
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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e41d978
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What we lose in our great human exodus from the land is a rooted sense, as deep and intangible as religious faith, of why we need to hold on to the wild and beautiful places that once surrounded us.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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4ea9cc6
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Be careful what you give children, for sooner or later you are sure to get it back.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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314e56e
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There can be no greater spiritual accomplishment than to come through brutal trials and then look back and see that mean times did not render us mean spirits.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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3bdc00b
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trust in Creation which is made fresh daily and doesn't suffer in translation. This God does not work in especially mysterious ways. The sun here rises and sets at six exactly. A caterpillar becomes a butterfly. A bird raises its brood in the forest and a greenheart tree will only grow from a greenheart seed. He brings drought sometimes followed by torrential rains and if these things aren't always what I had in mind, they aren't my punishm..
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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d2ea9fb
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I've always found people love you best if you can laugh at your own foolish misfortunes and keep mum about everyone else's
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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703dc3d
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Now, see, that's why you want Internet friends. You can find people just exactly like you. Screw your neighbors and your family, too messy...the trouble is, once you filter out everybody that doesn't agree with you, all that's left is maybe this one retired surfer guy living in Idaho.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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86775c1
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A breeze shook rain out of new leaves onto their hair, but in their pursuit of eternity they never noticed the chill.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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237d8d5
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Lies are infinite in number, and the truth so small and singular.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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59a1f38
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I can think of no honorable answer. Why must some of us deliberate between brands of toothpaste, while others deliberate between damp dirt and bone dust to quiet the fire of an empty stomach lining? There is nothing about the United States I can really explain to this child of another world.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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ede553a
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We are our injuries, as much as we are our successes.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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f4baa94
|
You can't replace people you love with other people...But you can trust that you're not going to run out of people to love.
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love
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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354745d
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Because I could not stop for death he kindly stopped for me, or paused at least to strike a glancing blow with his sky-blue mouth as he passed.
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mamaba
green
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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4197b97
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A flower is a plant's way of making love.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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e51dd78
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To people who think of themselves as God's houseguests, American enterprise must seem arrogant beyond belief. Or stupid. A nation of amnesiacs, proceeding as if there were no other day but today. Assuming the land could also forget what had been done to it.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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e0e8239
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The thing is, it's my own fault. I just can't put up with a person that won't go out of his way for me. And that's what a man is. Somebody that won't go out of his way for you. I bet it says that in the dictionary.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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8fd789c
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Most of the girls my age, or even younger, have babies. They appear way too young to be married, till you look in their eyes. Then you'll see it. Their eyes look happy and sad at the same time, but unexcited by anything, shifting easily off to the side as if they've already seen most of what there is. Married eyes.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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435a632
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For 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 mov..
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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1a46dfe
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Culture is a slingshot moved by the force of its past
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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1bea4e4
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If you ask me, when something extraordinary shows up in your life in the middle of the night, you give it a name and make it the best home you can.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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eab5b37
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We aimed for no more than to have dominion over every creature that moved upon the earth. And so it came to pass that we stepped down there on a place we believed unformed, where only darkness moved on the face of the waters. Now you laugh, day and night, while you gnaw on my bones. But what else could we have thought? Only that it began and ended with us. What do we know, even now? Ask the children. Look at what they grew up to be. We can ..
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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f329343
|
Art is the antidote that can call us back from the edge of numbness, restoring the ability to feel for another.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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5c1f50f
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Many bright people are really in the dark about vegetable life. Biology teachers face kids in classrooms who may not even believe in the metamorphosis of bud to flower to fruit and seed, but rather, some continuum of pansies becoming petunias becoming chrysanthemums; that's the only reality they witness as landscapers come to campuses and city parks and surreptitiously yank out one flower before it fades from its prime, replacing it with an..
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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f4b630c
|
My little beast, my eyes, my favorite stolen egg. Listen. To live is to be marked. To live is to change, to acquire the words of a story, and that is the only celebration we mortals really know. In perfect stillness, frankly, I've only found sorrow.
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Barbara Kingsolver |