The Bean Trees (Greer Family, #1) QUOTES

41 " ...the houses all seemed a little senile, with arthritc hinges and window screens hanging at embarrassing angles. "

― Barbara Kingsolver , The Bean Trees (Greer Family, #1)

43 " If you go to visit hell, you will see a room like this kitchen. There is a pot of delicious stew on the table, with the most delicate aroma you can imagine. All around, people sit, like us. Only they are dying of starvation. They are jibbering and jabbering,” he looked extra hard at Mrs. Parsons, “but they cannot get a bite of this wonderful stew God has made for them. Now, why is that?” “Because they’re choking? For all eternity?” Lou Ann asked. Hell, for Lou Ann, would naturally be a place filled with sharp objects and small round foods. “No,” he said. “Good guess, but no. They are starving because they only have spoons with very long handles. As long as that.” He pointed to the mop, which I had forgotten to put away. “With these ridiculous, terrible spoons, the people in hell can reach into the pot but they cannot put the food in their mouths. Oh, how hungry they are! Oh, how they swear and curse each other!” he said, looking again at Virgie. He was enjoying this. “Now,” he went on, “you can go and visit heaven. What? You see a room just like the first one, the same table, the same pot of stew, the same spoons as long as a sponge mop. But these people are all happy and fat.” “Real fat, or do you mean just well-fed?” Lou Ann asked. “Just well-fed,” he said. “Perfectly, magnificently well-fed, and very happy. Why do you think?” He pinched up a chunk of pineapple in his chopsticks, neat as you please, and reached all the way across the table to offer it to Turtle. She took it like a newborn bird. "

― Barbara Kingsolver , The Bean Trees (Greer Family, #1)

45 " After a while Estevan said, “What I really hate is not belonging in any place. To be unwanted everywhere. "

― Barbara Kingsolver , The Bean Trees (Greer Family, #1)

47 " Mi’ija, in a world as wrong as this one, all we can do is to make things as right as we can. "

― Barbara Kingsolver , The Bean Trees (Greer Family, #1)

49 " A storm was coming up from the south, moving slowly. It looked something like a huge blue-gray shower curtain being drawn along by the hand of God. "

― Barbara Kingsolver , The Bean Trees (Greer Family, #1)

51 " south, moving slowly. It looked something like a huge blue-gray shower curtain being drawn along by the hand of God. You could just barely see through it, enough to make "

― Barbara Kingsolver , The Bean Trees (Greer Family, #1)

53 " There is no point in treating a depressed person as though she were just feeling sad, saying, There now, hang on, you’ll get over it. Sadness is more or less like a head cold—with patience, it passes. Depression is like cancer. Cynthia "

― Barbara Kingsolver , The Bean Trees (Greer Family, #1)

55 " It’s also interesting how it’s hard to be depressed around a three-year-old, if you’re paying attention. After a while, whatever you’re mooning about begins to seem like some elaborate adult invention. "

― Barbara Kingsolver , The Bean Trees (Greer Family, #1)

57 " I don’t know where to start, Lou Ann,” I told her. “There’s just so damn much ugliness. Everywhere you look, some big guy kicking some little person when they’re down—look what they do to those people at Mattie’s. To hell with them, people say, let them die, it was their fault in the first place for being poor or in trouble, or for not being white, or whatever, how dare they try to come to this country. "

― Barbara Kingsolver , The Bean Trees (Greer Family, #1)

59 " You know what really gets me?” I asked him. “How people call you ‘illegals.’ That just pisses me off, I don’t know how you can stand it. A human being can be good or bad or right or wrong, maybe. But how can you say a person is illegal? "

― Barbara Kingsolver , The Bean Trees (Greer Family, #1)