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The Poisonwood Bible QUOTES

The Poisonwood Bible QUOTES

1 " A first child is your own best foot forward, and how you do cheer those little feet as they strike out. You examine every turn of flesh for precocity, and crow it to the world. But the last one: the baby who trails her scent like a flag of surrender through your life when there will be no more coming after--oh, that' s love by a different name. "

― Barbara Kingsolver , The Poisonwood Bible

2 " Don’t try to make life a mathematics problem with yourself in the center and everything coming out equal. When you’re good, bad things can still happen. And if you’re bad, you can still be lucky. "

― Barbara Kingsolver , The Poisonwood Bible

3 " Sugar, it's no parade but you'll get down the street one way or another, so you'd just as well throw your shoulders back and pick up the pace. "

― Barbara Kingsolver , The Poisonwood Bible

4 " Misunderstanding is my cornerstone. It's everyone's, come to think of it. Illusions mistaken for truth are the pavement under our feet. "

― Barbara Kingsolver , The Poisonwood Bible

5 " To live is to change, to acquire the words of a story, and that is the only celebration we mortals really know. "

― Barbara Kingsolver , The Poisonwood Bible

6 " Every life is different because you passed this way and touched history. "

― Barbara Kingsolver , The Poisonwood Bible

7 " A choir of seedlings arching their necks out of rotted tree stumps, sucking life out of death. I am the forest's conscience, but remember, the forest eats itself and lives forever. "

― Barbara Kingsolver , The Poisonwood Bible

8 " Listen: being dead is not worse than being alive. It is different though. You could say the view is larger. "

― Barbara Kingsolver , The Poisonwood Bible

9 " 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 , The Poisonwood Bible

10 " God doesn’t need to punish us. He just grants us a long enough life to punish ourselves. "

― Barbara Kingsolver , The Poisonwood Bible

11 " I could never work out whether we were to view religion as a life-insurance policy or a life sentence. I can understand a wrathful God who'd just as soon dangle us all from a hook. And I can understand a tender, unprejudiced Jesus. But I could never quite feature the two of them living in the same house. You wind up walking on eggshells, never knowing which... is at home at the moment. "

― Barbara Kingsolver , The Poisonwood Bible

12 " 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 , The Poisonwood Bible

13 " A territory is only possessed for a moment in time. "

― Barbara Kingsolver , The Poisonwood Bible

14 " If the Lord hasn't got a boyfriend lined up for me to marry, that's his business. "

― Barbara Kingsolver , The Poisonwood Bible

15 " I attempted briefly to consecrate myself in the public library, believing every crack in my soul could be chinked with a book. "

― Barbara Kingsolver , The Poisonwood Bible

16 " There is a strange moment in time, after something horrible happens, when you know it's true, but you haven't told anyone yet. "

― Barbara Kingsolver , The Poisonwood Bible

17 " Until that moment I'd thought I could have it both ways; to be one of them, and also my husband's wife. What conceit! I was his instrument, his animal. Nothing more. How we wives and mothers do perish at the hands of our own righteousness. I was just one more of those women who clamp their mouths shut and wave the flag as their nation rolls off to conquer another in war. Guilty or innocent, they have everything to lose. They are what there is to lose. A wife is the earth itself, changing hands, bearing scars. "

― Barbara Kingsolver , The Poisonwood Bible

18 " 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 , The Poisonwood Bible

19 " a single-file army of ants biting a mammoth tree into uniform grains and hauling it down to the dark for their ravenous queen. and, in reply, a choir of seedlings arching their necks out of rotted tree stumps, sucking life out of death. this forest eats itself and lives forever. "

― Barbara Kingsolver , The Poisonwood Bible

20 " That would be Axelroot all over, to turn up with an extra wife or two claiming that's how they do it here. Maybe he's been in Africa so long he's forgotten that we Christians have our own system of marriage, and it's called Monotony. "

― Barbara Kingsolver , The Poisonwood Bible