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81 " Mother says I never practiced anything but always watched Leah, letting her make the mistakes for both of us, until I was ready to do it myself with acceptable precision. Mother is kind to me, probably because I've stayed nearer at hand than her other children. But I disagree. I made plenty of my own mistakes. I just made them on the inside. "
― Barbara Kingsolver , The Poisonwood Bible
82 " But Mama has this certain voice sometimes. Not exactly sassing back, but just about nearly. "
83 " On the verbal portion I missed four questions, all having to do with choosing a word in a series that doesn't belong. I have always had trouble with that line of questioning. Given my own circumstances, I find that anything can turn out to belong nearly anywhere. "
84 " Mother, you had no life of your own. "
85 " If I eat one more egg omelet I think I"ll turn over easy and cluck. "
86 " Am I the only one getting shocked to smithereens here? "
87 " Remy, my third husband, was very devoted. He was an older man. My life has been 101 Calamities with at least half of them in the marriage department, but finally I got lucky in love, with Remy Fairley. He at least had the decency to die and leave me the Equatorial... the nicest hotel for business men "
88 " LISTEN, don’t believe in fairy tales! After that happy-ever-after wedding, they never tell you the rest of the story. Even if you get to marry the prince, you still wake up in the morning with your mouth tasting like drain cleaner and your hair all flat on one side. "
89 " We could see early on that all grown-ups aren’t equally immune to damage. My father wears his faith like the bronze breastplate of God’s foot soldiers, while our mother’s is more like a good cloth coat with a secondhand fit. "
90 " Some of us know how we came by our fortune, and some of us don’t, but we wear it all the same. "
91 " Oh, and the camel. Was it a camel that could pass through the eye of a needle more easily than a rich man? Or a coarse piece of yarn? The Hebrew words are the same, but which one did they mean? If it’s a camel, the rich man might as well not even try. But if it’s the yarn, he might well succeed with a lot of effort, you see? "
92 " For my part, I merely watched young, deprived female bosoms panting before my handsome husband, soldier of the Lord. (I longed to shout: Go ahead and try him, girls, I am too tired!) "
93 " Can one who hates right govern?” Job 34:13, "
94 " To live is to change, to acquire the words of a story... "
95 " But Pascal quickly forgave me, and it's a good thing, since friends of my own age and gender were not available, the girls of Kilanga all being too busy hauling around firewood, water, or babies. It did cross my mind to wonder why Pascal had the freedom to play and roam that his sisters didn't. While the little boys ran around pretending to shoot each other and fall dead in the road, it appeared that little girls were running the country. "
96 " And my husband, why, hell hath no fury like a Baptist preacher. "
97 " Right there in the middle of the road he took the cigarette out of my mouth and put it in his, then struck a match on his thumbnail and lit the two of them together, exactly like Humphrey Bogart. Then, ever so gently, he put the lit cigarette back in my lips. It seemed almost like we had kissed. Chills ran down my back, but I couldn’t tell for sure if it was thrill chills or the creeps. Sometimes it is very hard to know the difference. "
98 " I may be a preacher’s daughter, but I know a thing or two. And one of them is, when men want to kiss you they act like they are just on the brink of doing something that’s going to change the whole wide world. "
99 " 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 has forgotten that we Christians have our own system of marriage, and it is called Monotony. "
100 " Oh, it's a fine and useless enterprise, trying to fix destiny. That trail leads straight back to the time before we ever lived, and into that deep well it's easy to cast curses like stones on our ancestors. But that's nothing more than cursing ourselves and all that made us. Had I not married a preacher named Nathan Price, my particular children would never have seen the light of this world. I walked through the valley of my fate, is all, and learned to love what I could lose "