937 Quotes by Barbara Kingsolver

Like kids who only ever get socks for Christmas, but still believe with all their hearts in Santa.

I lost a child," she said, meeting Lusa's eyes directly. "I thought I wouldn't live through it. But you do. You learn to love the place somebody leaves behind for you.

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.

A mother's body remembers her babies-the folds of soft flesh, the softly furred scalp against her nose. Each child has it's own entreaties to body and soul.

She has changed in this way that motherhood changes you, so that you forget you ever had time for small things like despising the color pink.

That means you're my kid," I explained, "and I'm your mother, and nobody can say it isn't so.

Mother, you can still hold hold on but forgive, forgive and give for long as long as we both shall live, I forgive you, Mother.

Oh, it's a fine and useless enterprise, trying to fix destiny. That trail leads straight back to the time before we ever lived, and into that deep well it's easy to cast curses like stones on our ancestors. But that's nothing more than cursing ourselves and all that made us. Had I not married a preacher named Nathan Price, my particular children would never have seen the light of this world. I walked through the valley of my fate, is all, and learned to love what I could lose

The substance of grief is not imaginary. It's as real as rope or the absence of air, and like both those things it can kill.