Barbara Kingsolver - Child Quotes

10 Sourced Quotes

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When the scope of the problem seems insuperable, isn't it time to call this one, give it up, and get on with life as we know it. I do know that answer to that one: that's called child abuse. When my teenager worries that her generation won't be able to fix this problem, I have to admit to her that it won't be up to her generation. It's up to mine. This is a now-or-never kind of project.

Barbara Kingsolver
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.

Barbara Kingsolver
A first child is your own best foot forward, and how you do cheer those little feet as they strike out. You examine every turn of flesh for precocity, and crow it to the world. But the last one: the baby who trails her scent like a flag of surrender through your life when there will be no more coming after — oh, that' s love by a different name.

Barbara Kingsolver
Every minute in the presence of a child takes seven minutes off your life.

Barbara Kingsolver
When you're given a brilliant child you polish her and let her shine. Pigs in Heaven

Barbara Kingsolver
Every minute with a child takes seven minutes off your life.

Barbara Kingsolver
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.

Barbara Kingsolver
I can think of no honorable answer. Why must some of us deliberate between brands of toothpaste, while others deliberate between damp dirt and bone dust to quiet the fire of an empty stomach lining? There is nothing about the United States I can really explain to this child of another world.

Barbara Kingsolver
On the day I swore to uphold the Hippocratic oath, the small hairs on the back of my neck stood up as I waited for lightning to strike. Who was I, vowing calmly among all these necktied young men to steal life out of nature's jaws, every old time we got half a chance and a paycheck?... I could not accept the contract: that every child born human upon this earth comes with a guarantee of perfect health and old age clutched in its small fist.

Barbara Kingsolver
A miscarriage is a natural and common event. All told, probably more women have lost a child from this world than haven't. Most don't mention it, and they go on from day to day as if it hadn't happened, so people imagine a woman in this situation never really knew or loved what she had. But ask her sometime: how old would your child be now? And she'll know.

Barbara Kingsolver