Barbara Kingsolver

The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof.
― Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams

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

There is no point treating a depressed person as though she were just feeling sad, saying, 'There now, hang on, you'll get over it.' Sadness is more or less like a head cold- with patience, it passes. Depression is like cancer.
― Barbara Kingsolver, The Bean Tree

The friend who holds your hand and says the wrong thing is made of dearer stuff than the one who stays away.
― Barbara Kingsolver

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

Everything you're sure is right can be wrong in another place.
― Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible

God doesn’t need to punish us. He just grants us a long enough life to punish ourselves.
― Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible

Listen. To live is to be marked. To live is to change, to acquire the words of a story, and that is the only celebration we mortals really know. In perfect stillness, frankly, I've only found sorrow.
― Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible

But kids don't stay with you if you do it right. It's the one job where, the better you are, the more surely you won't be needed in the long run.
― Barbara Kingsolver, Pigs in Heaven