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
We came from Bethlehem, Georgia bearing Betty Crocker cake mixes into the jungle.
There is a strange moment in time, after something horrible happens, when you know it's true, but you haven't told anyone yet.
The friend who holds your hand and says the wrong thing is made of dearer stuff than the one who stays away.
Most of the girls my age, or even younger, have babies. They appear way too young to be married, till you look in their eyes. Then you'll see it. Their eyes look happy and sad at the same time, but unexcited by anything, shifting easily off to the side as if they've already seen most of what there is. Married eyes.
But Anatole said suddenly, 'Don't expect God's protection in places beyond God's dominion. It will only make you feel punished. I'm warning you. When things go bad, you will blame yourself.' 'What are you telling me?' 'I am telling you what I'm telling you. Don't try to make life a mathematics problem with yourself in the center and everything coming out equal. When you are good, bad things can still happen. And if you are bad, you can still be lucky.
Of the two hundred bones in the human body, more than a quarter are in the foot. It is a more complicated instrument than an automobile transmission, and it is treated with far less consideration.
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.
Pain reaches the heart with electrical speed, but truth moves to the heart as slowly as a glacier.
I don't bring expectations to any of my books. I don't tell people what to do. I want to invite them in.
I know I'm a rare person, a trained scientist who writes fiction, because so few contemporary novelists engage with science.
I live in a rural part of Virginia surrounded by farms and farmers.
I never think that anything I'm writing is bluntly political in any way. I'm not going for commentary.
I suppose that is my central obsession. What we owe to society, what we owe to ourselves.
Nonfiction requires enormous discipline. You construct the terms of your story, and then you stick to them.