But we've all ended up giving body and soul to Africa, one way or another. Even Adah, who's becoming an expert in tropical epidemiology and strange new viruses. Each of us got our heart buried in six feet of African dirt; we are all co-conspirators here. I mean, all of us, not just my family. So what do you do now? You get to find your own way to dig out a heart and shake it off and hold it up to the light again.
("The Poisonwood Bible")
More Quotes from Barbara Kingsolver:
What kind of weirdo makes cheese? It's too hard to imagine, too homespun, too something. We're so alienated from the creation of even ordinary things we eat or use, each one seems to need its own public relations team to calm the American subservience to hurry and bring us back around to doing a thing ourselves, at home.Barbara Kingsolver
I had just dropped out of medicine in my first year of residency, a few months shy of becoming a licensed M.D. I'd discovered there was something serious, mainly a matter of nerve and perhaps empathy, that stood in my way.
Barbara Kingsolver
You know things are bad when a woman without any legs and who recently lost two of her own kids feels sorry for you.
Barbara Kingsolver
Many other raw food products--notably poultry from CAFOs--typically carry a much higher threat to human health in terms of pathogen load, and yet the government trusts us to render it safe in our own humble kitchens. But it's easy to see how impossibly strict milk rules might gratify industry lobbyists, by eliminating competition from family producers.
Barbara Kingsolver
How is it right to slip free of an old skin and walk away from the scene of the crime? We came, we saw, we took away and we left behind, we must be allowed our anguish and our regrets.
Barbara Kingsolver
For time and eternity there have been fathers like Nathan who simply can see no way to have a daughter but to own her like a plot of land. To work her, plow her under, rain down a dreadful poison upon her. Miraculously, it causes these girls to grow. They elongate on the pale slender stalks of their longing, like sunflowers with heavy heads. You can shield them with your body and soul, trying to absorb that awful rain, but they'll still move toward him. Without cease they'll bend to his light.
Barbara Kingsolver
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Based on Topics: Family Quotes, Light QuotesBased on Keywords: adah, co-conspirators, epidemiology
In every work of art the subject is primordial, whether the artist knows it or not. The measure of the formal qualities is only a sign of the measure of the artist's obsession with his subject; the form is always in proportion to the obsession.
Alberto Giacometti
This life of ours, this is a wonderful life. If you can get through life like this and get away with it, hey that's great. But it's very predictable. There's so many ways you can screw it up.
Paul Castellano
Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain.
Lily Tomlin