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81 " Pay attention to your dreams; when you go on a trip, in your dreams you will still be home. Then after you've come home you'll dream of where you were. It's a kind of jet lag of the consciousness. "
― Barbara Kingsolver , Animal Dreams
82 " Watching Italians eat (especially men, I have to say) is a form of tourism the books don't tell you about. They close their eyes, raise their eyebrows into accent marks, and make sounds of acute appreciation. It's fairly sexy. Of course I don't know how these men behave at home, if they help with the cooking or are vain and boorish and mistreat their wives. I realized Mediterranean cultures have their issues. Fine, don't burst my bubble. I didn’t want to marry these guys, I just wanted to watch. (p. 247) "
― Barbara Kingsolver , Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life
83 " Why does a person spend money on a stamp to spout bile at a stranger? "
― Barbara Kingsolver , The Lacuna
84 " The truth needs so little rehearsal. "
― Barbara Kingsolver
85 " But kids don't stay with you if you do it right. It's the one job where, the better you are, the more surely you won't be needed in the long run. "
― Barbara Kingsolver , Pigs in Heaven
86 " Sometimes the strength of motherhood is greater than natural laws. "
― Barbara Kingsolver , Homeland and Other Stories
87 " Parenting is something that happens mostly while you’re thinking of something else. "
88 " This story about good food begins in a quick-stop convenience market. "
89 " Our holiday food splurge was a small crate of tangerines, which we found ridiculously thrilling after an eight-month abstinence from citrus.... Lily hugged each one to her chest before undressing it as gently as a doll. Watching her do that as she sat cross-legged on the floor one morning in pink pajamas, with bliss lighting her cheeks, I thought: Lucky is the world, to receive this grateful child. Value is not made of money, but a tender balance of expectation and longing. "
90 " The longer I think about a food industry organized around an animal that cannot reproduce itself without technical assistance, the more I mistrust it. Poultry, a significant part of the modern diet, is emblematic of the whole dirty deal. Having no self-sustaining bloodlines to back up the industry is like having no gold standard to underpin paper currency. Maintaining a natural breeding poultry flock is a rebellion, at the most basic level, against the wholly artificial nature of how foods are produced. "
91 " As a dinner guest I gratefully eat just about anything that's set before me, because graciousness among friends is dearer to me than any other agenda. "
― Barbara Kingsolver , Small Wonder
92 " Eating is a genuine need, continuous from our first day to our last, amounting over time to our most significant statement of what we are made of and what we have chosen to make of our connection to home ground. "
93 " It lasted just a moment, whatever that is. One held breath? An ant's afternoon? It was brief, I can promise that much, for although it's been many years now since my children ruled my life, a mother recalls the measure of the silences. "
― Barbara Kingsolver , The Poisonwood Bible
94 " Mistakes wreck your life. But they make what you have. It's kind of all one. You know what Hester told me when we were working the sheep one time? She said it's no good to complain about your flock, because it's the put-together of all your past choices. "
― Barbara Kingsolver , Flight Behavior
95 " Value is not made of money, but a tender balance of expectation and longing. "
96 " Every quiet step is thunder to beetle life underfoot. "
― Barbara Kingsolver , Prodigal Summer
97 " When something extraordinary shows up in your life in the middle of the night, you give it a name and make it the best home you can. "
― Barbara Kingsolver , High Tide in Tucson
98 " He lifts her breasts, which fit perfectly into his hands, though he knows this is no promise that he gets to keep them. A million things you can't have will fit in a human hand. "
99 " In Bobby Ogle's version of heaven everyone would wind up in one place, criminals and Muslims included. "
100 " She is too absorbed in the difficulties of being seventeen to want to hear the confusions of forty-four. "