Barbara Kingsolver Quotes
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I love developing children as characters. Children rarely have important roles in literary fiction - they are usually defined as cute or precious, or they create a plot by being kidnapped or dying.
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You always need that spark of imagination. Sometimes I'm midway through a book before it happens. However, I don't wait for the muse to descend, I sit down every day and I work when I'm not delivering lambs on the farm.
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The first sentence of a book is a promise.
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Every time I step onto an airplane, I turn to the right and take a good, hard stare into the maw of the engine. I don't know what I'm looking for. I just do it.
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Motherhood is so sentimentalised and romanticised in our culture. It's practically against the law to say there are moments in the day when you hate your children. Everyone actually has those moments.
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It seems very safe to me to be surrounded by green growing things and water.
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I'm not pretending to be ingenuous; I know what I'm doing.
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I do my best work if I think about what it is I have to offer.
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A flock is nothing but the put-together of all your past choices.
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My morning begins with trying not to get up before the sun rises. But when I do, it's because my head is too full of words, and I just need to get to my desk and start dumping them into a file. I always wake with sentences pouring into my head.
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We're animals. We're born like every other mammal and we live our whole lives around disguised animal thoughts.
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I grew up aware of all the people I depended on and who depended on me.
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I was trained in classical piano, but it kind of dawned on me that classical pianists compete for six job openings a year, and the rest of us get to play 'Blue Moon' in a hotel lobby.
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Terms like that, 'Humane Society,' are devised with people like me in mind, who don't care to dwell on what happens to the innocent.
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It takes some courage to write fiction about politically controversial topics. The dread is you'll be labeled a political writer.
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I live in a rural part of Virginia surrounded by farms and farmers.
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I used to think religion was just more of the same thing. Dump responsibility on the big guy. Now I see an importance in that. It's a relief to accept that not everything is under your control.
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I know I'm a rare person, a trained scientist who writes fiction, because so few contemporary novelists engage with science.
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I don't understand how any good art could fail to be political.
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The older I get, the more I appreciate my rural childhood. I spent a lot of time outdoors, unsupervised, which is a blessing.
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When people are frightened about going hungry and paying their mortgages, a scarcity model begins to prevail; they fear someone else will get their piece of the pie.
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Libraries are the one American institution you shouldn't rip off.
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Few people know so clearly what they want. Most people can't even think what to hope for when they throw a penny in a fountain.
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Nonfiction requires enormous discipline. You construct the terms of your story, and then you stick to them.