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61 " There is no point in treating a depressed person as though she were just feeling sad...Sadness is more or less like a head cold -- with patience, it passes. Depression is like cancer. "
― Barbara Kingsolver , The Bean Trees (Greer Family, #1)
62 " You can curse the dead or pray for them, but don't expect them to do a thing for you. They're far too interested in watching us, to see what in heaven's name we will do next. "
― Barbara Kingsolver , The Poisonwood Bible
63 " I’ve seen how you can’t learn anything when you’re trying to look like the smartest person in the room. "
64 " I never learn anything from listening to myself. "
― Barbara Kingsolver , Flight Behavior
65 " While we watched without comprehension, she moved away to where none of us wanted to follow. Ruth May shrank back through the narrow passage between this brief fabric of light and all the rest of what there is for us: the long waiting. Now she will wait the rest of the time. It will be exactly as long as the time that passed before she was born. "
66 " Mother, you can still hold hold on but forgive, forgive and give for long as long as we both shall live, I forgive you, Mother. "
67 " 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. Think of the vine that curls from the small square plot that was once my heart. That is the only marker you need. Move on. Walk forward into the light. "
68 " How pointless life could be, what a foolish business of inventing things to love, just so you could dread losing them. "
― Barbara Kingsolver , Prodigal Summer
69 " You can’t replace people you love with other people…But you can trust that you’re not going to run out of people to love. "
― Barbara Kingsolver , Animal Dreams
70 " 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. "
71 " Sometimes I've survived anger only one minute at a time, by saying to myself again and again that the best kind of revenge is some kind of life beyond this, some kind of goodness. And I can lay no claim to goodness until I can prove that mean people have not made me mean. "
― Barbara Kingsolver , Small Wonder
72 " The flowers were beaten down, their bent-over heads bejeweled with diamond droplets like earring on sad, rich widows "
73 " Now, see, that's why everybody wants Internet friends. You can find people just exactly like you. Screw your neighbors and your family, too messy.' Dovey's phone buzzed, and she laughed, ignoring it. 'The trouble is, once you filter out everybody that doesn't agree with you, all that's left is maybe this one retired surfer guy living in Idaho. "
74 " I almost never respect men. They're like flowers -- all show, a lot of color and lust. You pick them and throw them on the ground. "
― Barbara Kingsolver , The Lacuna
75 " What I want is so simple I almost can’t say it: elementary kindness. "
76 " 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. "
77 " We are bodies, sometimes with dreams and always with desires. "
78 " I do understand that they fall when I'm least able to pay attention because poems fall not from a tree, really, but from the richly pollinated boughs of an ordinary life, buzzing, as lives do, with clamor and glory. They are easy to miss but everywhere: poetry just is, whether we revere it or try to put it in prison. It is elementary grace, communicated from one soul to another. "
79 " She never says gracias because life is made of survival not grace, she says, and servants are paid to bring what they're asked. "
80 " Even feigning surprise, pretending it was unexpected and saying a ritual thanks, is surely wiser than just expecting everything so carelessly. "
― Barbara Kingsolver , Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life