Barbara Kingsolver
Barbara Kingsolver
Barbara Kingsolveris an American novelist, essayist and poet. She was raised in rural Kentucky and lived briefly in the Congo in her early childhood. Kingsolver earned degrees in biology at DePauw University and the University of Arizona and worked as a freelance writer before she began writing novels. Her widely known works include The Poisonwood Bible, the tale of a missionary family in the Congo, and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, a non-fiction account of her family's attempts to eat locally...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth8 April 1955
CountryUnited States of America
I can think of no honorable answer. Why must some of us deliberate between brands of toothpaste, while others deliberate between damp dirt and bone dust to quiet the fire of an empty stomach lining? There is nothing about the United States I can really explain to this child of another world.
Honk if you love Jesus, text while driving if you want to meet up.
Everyone should get dirt on his hands each day. Doctors, intellectuals. Politicians, most of all. How can we presume to uplift the life of the working man, if we don't respect his work?
...whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. And peace will be with you.
A novel can educate to some extent, but first a novel has to entertain. That's the contract with the reader: you give me ten hours and I'll give you a reason to turn every page. I have a commitment to accessibility. I believe in plot. I want an English professor to understand the symbolism while at the same time I want the people I grew up with - who may not often read anything but the Sears catalog - to read my books.
I struggle with confidence, every time. I'm never completely sure I can write another book. Maybe my scope is too grand, my questions too hard, surely readers won't want to follow me here. A novel is like a cathedral, it knocks you down to size when you enter into it.
It's tough to break yourself as news to a town that already knows you.
I don't look like who I am.
You never knew which split second might be the zigzag bolt dividing all that went before from the everything that comes next.
We tap our toes to chaste love songs about the silvery moon without recognizing them as hymns to copulation.
It is completely usual for me to get up in the morning, take a look around, and laugh out loud.
Food is the rare moral arena in which the ethical choice is generally the one more likely to make you groan with pleasure.
The things I carry closest to my heart are things I can't own.
Wherever I am, let me never forget to distinguish want from need