BiographyType: Novelist, essayist and poet Born: April 8, 1955 Died: Barbara Kingsolver is 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. |
This manuscript of yours that has just come back from another editor is a precious package. Don't consider it rejected. Consider that you've addressed it 'to the editor who can appreciate my work' and it has simply come back stamped 'Not at this address'. Just keep looking for the right address.
What there is in this world I think is a tendency for human errors to level themselves like water throughout there sphere of influence. That's pretty much the whole of what I can say looking back. There is the possibility of balance.Unbearable burden that the world somehow bare with a certain grace.
What I want is so simple I almost can't say it: elementary kindness.
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.
Misunderstanding is my cornerstone. It's everyone's, come to think of it. Illusions mistaken for truth are the pavement under our feet.
To live is to change, to acquire the words of a story, and that is the only celebration we mortals really know.
Every life is different because you passed this way and touched history.
Listen: being dead is not worse than being alive. It is different though. You could say the view is larger.
Awareness is everything. Hallie once pointed out to me that people worry a lot more about the eternity *after* their deaths than the eternity that happened before they were born. But it's the same amount of infinity, rolling out in all directions from where we stand.
If the Lord hasn't got a boyfriend lined up for me to marry, that's his business.
He warned Mother not to flout God's Will by expecting too much of us. "Sending a girl to college is like pouring water in your shoes,' he still loves to say, as often as possible. 'It's hard to say which is worse, seeing it run out and waste the water, or seeing it hold in and wreck the shoes.
God doesn’t need to punish us. He just grants us a long enough life to punish ourselves.