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01d1dcb
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They all attended Hester's church, which Dellarobia viewed as a complicated pyramid scheme of moral debt and credit resting ultimately on the shoulders of the Lord, but rife with middle managers.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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40535f4
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The loudest sound on earth, she thought, is a man with nothing to do.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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6539f3c
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The average food item on a U.S. grocery shelf has traveled farther than most families go on their annual vacations.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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e5338e8
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You never knew which split second might be the zigzag bolt dividing all that went before from the everything that comes next.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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8212792
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I considered her my ally, because, like me, she was imperfect.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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9826e83
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Sometimes I still have American dreams. I mean literally. I see microwave ovens and exercise machines and grocery store shelves with 30 brands of shampoo, and I look at these things oddly, in my dream. I stand and think, "What is all this for? What is the hunger that drives this need?" I think it's fear. Codi, I hope you won't be hurt by this, but I don't think I'll ever be going back. I don't think I can."
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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57f15f7
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This is what it means to be alone: everyone is connected to everyone else, their bodies are a bright liquid life flowing around you, sharing a single heart that drives them to move all together. If the shark comes they will all escape, and leave you to be eaten.
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loneliness
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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483a32a
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He warned Mother not to flout God's Will by expecting too much of us. "Sending a girl to college is like pouring water in your shoes,' he still loves to say, as often as possible. 'It's hard to say which is worse, seeing it run out and waste the water, or seeing it hold in and wreck the shoes."
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girls
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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a4a64ff
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When I want to take God at his word exactly, I take a peep out the window at His creation. Because that, darling, He makes fresh for us everyday...
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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d20ca99
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When someone mattered like that, you didn't lose her at death. You lost her as you kept living.
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mother
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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63f9b15
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whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. And peace will be with you.
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peace
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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66216a9
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Insomnia's different," I said. It was hard to explain this to people. "You know the light that comes on when you open the refrigerator door? Just imagine it stays on all the time, even after you close the door. That's what it's like in my head. The light stays on."
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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d066b6e
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I don't expect to see perfection before I die. Lord, if I did I would have stuck my head in the oven back in Tucson, after hearing the stories of some of those refugees. What keeps you going isn't some fine destination but just the road you're on, and the fact that you know how to drive. You keep your eyes open, you see this damned-to-hell world you got born into, and you ask yourself, "What life can I live that will let me breathe in & out..
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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9348503
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Anybody can get worked up, if they have the intention. It's peacefulness that is hard to come by on purpose.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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ff40db2
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On the day I swore to uphold the Hippocratic oath, the small hairs on the back of my neck stood up as I waited for lightning to strike. Who was I, vowing calmly among all these necktied young men to steal life out of nature's jaws, every old time we got half a chance and a paycheck?... I could not accept the contract: that every child born human upon this earth comes with a guarantee of perfect health and old age clutched in its small fist.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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8324499
|
It occurs to her that there is one thing about people you can never understand well enough: how entirely inside themselves they are.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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a6a0943
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she's never forgotten, either, how a mystery caught in the hand could lose its grace
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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2e1bf68
|
It's one thing to carry your life wherever you go. Another thing to always go looking for it somewhere else.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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85e6d39
|
The past is all we know of the future.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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714ef25
|
He needs to go rub his soul against life.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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a1265cf
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God, why does a mortal man have children? It is senseless to love anything this much.
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parenting
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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2d55c66
|
She is inhumanly alone. And then, all at once, she isn't.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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0453dc0
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The most important part of a story is the piece of it you don't know.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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6152fdd
|
I've been thinking about that. 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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68017ed
|
I don't know what rituals my kids will carry into adulthood, whether they'll grow up attached to homemade pizza on Friday nights, or the scent of peppers roasting over a fire, or what. I do know that flavors work their own ways under the skin, into the heart of longing. Where my kids are concerned I find myself hoping for the simplest things: that if someday they crave orchards where their kids can climb into the branches and steal apples, ..
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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0f26b66
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War so conspicuously benefits rich men and kills the poor ones.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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5406c61
|
Back then I was still appalled that God would set down his barefoot boy and girl dollies into an Eden where, presumably, He had just turned loose elephantiasis and microbes that eat the human cornea. Now I understand, God is not just rooting for the dollies.
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poisonwood
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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27678ee
|
Human manners are wildly inconsistent; plenty of people have said so. But this one takes the cake: the manner in which we're allowed to steal from future generations, while commanding them not to do that to us, and rolling our eyes at anyone who is tediously PC enough to point that out. The conspicious consumption of limited resources has yet to be accepted widely as a spirtual error, or even bad manners.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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dd94025
|
Mi'ija, in a world as wrong as this one, all we can do is to make things as right as we can.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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0affeb3
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There was a roaring in my ears and I lost track of what they were saying. I believe it was the physical manifestation of unbearable grief.
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grief
loss
love
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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254050e
|
Planning complex, beautiful meals and investing one's heart and time in their preparation is the opposite of self-indulgence. Kitchen-based family gatherings are process-oriented, cooperative, and in the best of worlds, nourishing and soulful. A lot of calories get used up before anyone sits down to consume. But more importantly, a lot of talk happens first, news exchanged, secrets revealed across generations, paths cleared with a touch on ..
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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30ddb16
|
One day we came home from some errands to find a grocery sack of [zucchini] hanging on our mailbox. The perpetrator, of course, was nowhere in sight ... Garrison Keillor says July is the only time of year when country people lock our cars in the church parking lot, so people won't put squash on the front seat. I used to think that was a joke ... It's a relaxed atmosphere in our little town, plus our neighbors keep an eye out and will, if as..
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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c7268ea
|
Oh, that river of wishes, the slippery crocodile dream of it, how it might have carried my body down through all the glittering sand bars to the sea.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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4e88c67
|
A certain feeling comes from throwing your good life away, and it is one part rapture.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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80f273a
|
God is frightful, God is great--you pick. I choose this: God is in the details, the completely unnecessary miracles sometimes tossed up as stars to guide us. They are the promise of good fortune in a cloudless day, and the animals in the clouds; look hard enough, and you'll see them. Don't ask if they're real.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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3eb3580
|
This story about good food begins in a quick-stop convenience market.
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food
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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059a845
|
The last generations's worst fears become the next one's B-grade entertainment.
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generations
fears
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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534530e
|
What keeps you going isn't just some fine destination but the road you're on and the fact you know how to drive.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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aa5a256
|
But still, I'd be darned if I was going to be one of those Americans who stomp around Italy barking commands in ever-louder English. I was going to be one of those Americans who traversed Italy with my forehead knit in concentration, divining wordsw from their Latin roots and answering by wedging French cognates into Italian pronunciations spliced onto a standard Spanish verb conjugation.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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7f124a3
|
Whatever you want the most, it's going to be the worst thing for you.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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29de0f2
|
You know things are bad when a woman without any legs and who recently lost two of her own kids feels sorry for you.
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|
Barbara Kingsolver |
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5662eee
|
Want is a thing that unfurls unbidden like fungus, opening large upon itself, stopless, filling the sky. But needs, from one day to the next, are few enough to fit in a bucket, with room enough left to rattle like brittle brush in a dry wind.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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67a3452
|
For scientists, reality is not optional.
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science
scientists
|
Barbara Kingsolver |
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515fb80
|
It lasted just a moment, whatever that is. One held breath? An ant's afternoon? It was brief, I can promise that much, for although it's been many years now since my children ruled my life, a mother recalls the measure of the silences.
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silence
|
Barbara Kingsolver |