937 Quotes by Barbara Kingsolver

Zeke embodied the contradiction of his generation: jaded about the fate of the world, idealistic about personal prospects.

Today at the Melchor market, a fantastical sight. A servant girl with a birdcage on her back, full of birds. She wore her blue shawl wrapped around the cage and tied in front to hold it. The willow cage must have been very light because she was not bent over, yet it towered over her head, with turrets like a Japanese pagoda. And full of birds: green and yellow, flapping about like dreams trying to escape from a skull.

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.

I was struck with how full a silence could be: a Carolina wren sang from the eave of the shed; cedar waxwings carried on whispery bickerings up in the cherry; a mockingbird did an odd jerky dance, as if seized by the bird spirit, out on the driveway. The pea bowl rang like an insistent bell as we tossed in our peas.

I don’t know where to start, Lou Ann,” I told her. “There’s just so damn much ugliness. Everywhere you look, some big guy kicking some little person when they’re down – look what they do to those people at Mattie’s. To hell with them, people say, let them die, it was their fault in the first place for being poor or in trouble, or for not being white, or whatever, how dare they try to come to this country.

There are some who’d hardly lift a finger for kindness, but they would haul up a load of rock to dump on some soul they think’s been too lucky.

The things I carry closest to my heart are things I can’t own.

There are days when I am envious of my hens: when I hunger for a purpose as perfect and sure as a single daily egg.

I walked through the valley of my fate, is all, and learned to love what I could lose.