Barbara Kingsolver - The Lacuna (2009)

22 Sourced Quotes

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Mr. Shepherd, ye cannot stop a bad thought from coming into your head. But ye need not pull up a chair and bide it sit down." - Mrs. Brown

Barbara Kingsolver
Our best task is to move forward without insisting others slide backward.

Barbara Kingsolver
Everyone should get dirt on his hands each day. Doctors, intellectuals. Politicians, most of all. How can we presume to uplift the life of the working man, if we don't respect his work?

Barbara Kingsolver
If you're standing in the manure pile, it's somebody's job to mention the stink.

Barbara Kingsolver
Tomorrow these villagers would carry their secret icons into the church without any priest and light the candles themselves, moving together in single-minded grace. Like the school of the fish, so driven to righteousness they could flout the law, declare the safety of their souls, then go home and destroy the evidence.

Barbara Kingsolver
This is what it means to be alone: everyone is connected to everyone else, their bodies are a bright liquid life flowing around you, sharing a single heart that drives them to move all together. If the shark comes they will all escape, and leave you to be eaten.

Barbara Kingsolver
Bitter words normally evaporate with the moisture of breath, after a quarrel. In order to become permanent, they require transcribers, reporters, complicit black hearts.

Barbara Kingsolver
He hid a scornful smile under his mustache, which is not a good hiding place.

Barbara Kingsolver
You know reviewers, they are the wind in their own sails.

Barbara Kingsolver
War so conspicuously benefits rich men and kills the poor ones.

Barbara Kingsolver
People love to read about sins and errors, but not their own.

Barbara Kingsolver
Lies are infinite in number, and the truth so small and singular.

Barbara Kingsolver
No reporter worth his buttons will let the facts intrude on a good story.

Barbara Kingsolver
Memories do not always soften with time; some grow edges like knives.

Barbara Kingsolver
In the long run, most of us spend about fifteen minutes total in the entanglements of passion, and the rest of our days looking back on it, humming the tune.

Barbara Kingsolver
A good title holds magic, some cognitive dissonance, a little grit between the teeth, but above all it is the jumping-off place into wonder.

Barbara Kingsolver
Mother could go for one year without food, but not one day without her lip sticks.

Barbara Kingsolver
Does a man become a revolutionary out of the belief he's entitled to joy rather than submission?

Barbara Kingsolver
What we end up calling history is a kind of knife, slicing down through time. A few people are hard enough to bend its edge. But most won't even stand close to the blade. I'm one of those. We don't bend anything.

Barbara Kingsolver
Our house is like an empty cigarette packet, lying around reminding you what's not in it.

Barbara Kingsolver
The most important thing about a person is always the thing you don't know.

Barbara Kingsolver
It's a great freedom to give up on love, and get on with everything else.

Barbara Kingsolver