Barbara Kingsolver

"Empathy is really the opposite of spiritual meanness. It’s the capacity to understand that every war is both won and lost. And that someone else’s pain is as meaningful as your own."

- Barbara Kingsolver

"Because nothing wondrous can come in this world unless it rests on the shoulders of kindness."

- Barbara Kingsolver

"The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof."

- Barbara Kingsolver

"Hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof."

- Barbara Kingsolver

"Hope is a renewable option: If you run out of it at the end of the day, you get to start over in the morning."

- Barbara Kingsolver

"A first child is your own best foot forward, and how you do cheer those little feet as they strike out."

- Barbara Kingsolver

"The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope."

- Barbara Kingsolver

"But kids don't stay with you if you do it right. It's the one job where, the better you are, the more surely you won't be needed in the long run."

- Barbara Kingsolver

"But kids don’t stay with you if you do it right. It’s the one job where, the better you are, the more surely you won’t be needed in the long run."

- Barbara Kingsolver

"I'm lonely. And I'm lonely in some horribly deep way and for a flash of an instant, I can see just how lonely, and how deep this feeling runs. And it scares the shit out of me to be this lonely because it seems catastrophic."

- Barbara Kingsolver

"Sometimes the strength of motherhood is greater than natural laws."

- Barbara Kingsolver

"Sometimes, the strength of motherhood is greater than natural laws."

- Barbara Kingsolver

"“Sometimes the strength of motherhood is greater than natural laws.”"

- Barbara Kingsolver

"The strength of motherhood is stronger than natural laws."

- Barbara Kingsolver

"Memory is a complicated thing, relative to truth, but not its twin."

- Barbara Kingsolver

"It’s surprising how much memory is built around things unnoticed at the time."

- Barbara Kingsolver

"Kids don’t stay with you if you do it right. It’s the one job where, the better you are, the more surely you won’t be needed in the long run."

- Barbara Kingsolver

"All the noise in my brain. I clamp it to the page so it will be still."

- Barbara Kingsolver

"Stop a minute, right where you are. Relax your shoulders, shake your head and spine like a dog shaking off cold water. Tell that imperious voice in your head to be still."

- Barbara Kingsolver

"The truth needs so little rehearsal."

- Barbara Kingsolver

"Empathy is really the opposite of spiritual meanness. It's the capacity to understand that every war is both won and lost. And that someone else's pain is as meaningful as your own."

- Barbara Kingsolver

"People need wild places. Whether or not we think we do, we do. We need to be able to taste grace and know once again that we desire it. We need to experience a landscape that is timeless, whose agenda moves at the pace of speciation and glaciers. To be surrounded by the singing, mating, howling commotion of other species, all of which love their lives as much as we do ours, and none of which could possibly care less about our economic status or our running day calendar. Wildness puts us in our place."

- Barbara Kingsolver