Barbara Kingsolver - The Poisonwood Bible (1998)

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A wife is the earth itself, changing hands, bearing scars.

Barbara Kingsolver
Listen: being dead is not worse than being alive. It is different, though. You could say the view is larger.

Barbara Kingsolver
Poor Congo, barefoot bride of men who took her jewels and promised the Kingdom.

Barbara Kingsolver
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.

Barbara Kingsolver
Oh, mercy. If it catches you in the wrong frame of mind, the King James Bible can make you want to drink poison in no uncertain terms.

Barbara Kingsolver
Maybe he's been in Africa so long he has forgotten that we Christians have our own system of marriage, and it is called Monotony.

Barbara Kingsolver
In exchange for his first taste of powdered milk, Pascal showed me a tree we could climb to find a bird's nest. After we handled and examined the pink-skinned baby birds, he popped one of them into his mouth like a jujube. It seemed to please him a lot. He offered a baby bird to me, pantomiming that I should eat it. I understood perfectly well what he meant, but I refused. He did not seem disappointed to have to eat the whole brood himself.

Barbara Kingsolver
Pure and unblemished souls must taste very bland, with an aftertaste of bitterness.

Barbara Kingsolver
Our childhood had passed over into history overnight. The transition was unnoticed by anyone but ourselves.

Barbara Kingsolver
You see mother, you had no life of your own. They have no idea. One has only a life of one's own.

Barbara Kingsolver
The arrogance of the able-bodied is staggering. Yes, maybe we'd like to be able to get places quickly, and carry things in both hands but only because we have to keep up with the rest of you... We would rather be just like us, and have that be all right.

Barbara Kingsolver
Misunderstanding is my cornerstone. It's everyone's, come to think of it. Illusions mistaken for truth are the pavement under our feet. They are what we call civilization.

Barbara Kingsolver
He was my father. I own half his genes, and all of his history. Believe this: the mistakes are part of the story. I am born of a man who believed he could tell nothing but the truth, while he set down for all time the Poisonwood Bible.

Barbara Kingsolver
I look at my four boys, who are the colors of silt, loam, dust, and clay, an infinite palette for children of their own, and I understand that time erases whiteness altogether.

Barbara Kingsolver
Friends, there is nothing like your own family to make you appreciate strangers!

Barbara Kingsolver
Poor Africa. No other continent has endured such an unspeakably bizarre combination of foreign thievery and foreign goodwill.

Barbara Kingsolver
The death of something living is the price of our own survival, and we pay it again and again. We have no choice. It is the one solemn promise every life on earth is born and bound to keep.

Barbara Kingsolver
Listen. Slide the weight from your shoulders and move forward. You are afraid you might forget, but you never will. You will forgive and remember.

Barbara Kingsolver
We came from Bethlehem, Georgia bearing Betty Crocker cake mixes into the jungle.

Barbara Kingsolver
It's frightening when things you love appear suddenly changed from what you have always known.

Barbara Kingsolver
I stir in bed and the memories rise out of me like a buzz of flies from a carcass. I crave to be rid of them...

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
I wonder that religion can live or die on the strength of a faint, stirring breeze. The scent trail shifts, causing the predator to miss the pounce. One god draws in the breath of life and rises; another god expires.

Barbara Kingsolver
Because I could not stop for death he kindly stopped for me, or paused at least to strike a glancing blow with his sky-blue mouth as he passed.

Barbara Kingsolver
I've seen how you can't learn anything when you're trying to look like the smartest person in the room.

Barbara Kingsolver