Quotes by Barbara Kingsolver

“These paintings say Mexico is an ancient thing that will still go on forever telling its own story in slabs of color leaves and fruits and proud naked Indians in a history without shame. Their grea...”

“I’ve seen how you can’t learn anything when you’re trying to look like the smartest person in the room.”

“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.”

“I almost never respect men. They're like flowers -- all show, a lot of color and lust. You pick them and throw them on the ground.”

“What I want is so simple I almost can’t say it: elementary kindness.”

“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...”

“We are bodies, sometimes with dreams and always with desires.”

“She never says gracias because life is made of survival not grace, she says, and servants are paid to bring what they're asked.”

“Why does a person spend money on a stamp to spout bile at a stranger?”

“It’s a funny thing to complain about, but most of America is perfectly devoid of smells. I must have noticed it before, but this last time back I felt it as an impairment. For weeks after we arrive...”

“Parenting is something that happens mostly while you’re thinking of something else.”

“The giant beech next door intends to shiver off every hair of its pelt.”

“A dog can’t think that much about what he’s doing, he just does what feels right.”

“...when the public nerve is aroused, the most impressive capacity of man is his skill for lying.”

“Well, the ancients might not have been very heroic. Most of them were probably like Mother, crouched somewhere trying to work out how to make fake jawbone jewelry that would look like the real thing.”

“Most of them don't know what communism is, could not pick it out of a lineup. They only know what anticommunism is. The two are practically unrelated.”

“Life proceeds, it enrages. The untouched ones spend their luck without a thought, believing they deserve it.”

“The urge to lie is produced by the contradictions in our lives. We are made to declare love for our country, while it tramples our rights and dignity.”

“How does an artist learn enough about life to fill a thimble?""Soli, I'm going to tell you. He needs to go rub his soul against life. ...”

“Everyone should get dirt on his hands each day. Doctors, intellectuals. Politicians, most of all. How can we presume to uplift the life of the working man, if we don't respect his work?”