Quotes from Homeland and Other Stories

“Sometimes the strength of motherhood is greater than natural laws.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from Homeland and Other Stories

“As I looked at her there among the pumpkins I was overcome with the color and the intesity of my life. In these moments we are driven to try and hoard happiness by taking photographs, but I know better. The improtant thing was what the colors stood for, the taste of hard apples and the existence of Lena and the exact quality of the sun on the last warm day in October. A photograph would have flattened the scene into a happy moment, whereas what I felt was rapture. The fleeting certainty that I deserved this space I'd been taking up on this earth, and all the air I had breathed.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from Homeland and Other Stories

“Children can be your heartache. But that doesn't matter, you have to go on and have them . . . it works out.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from Homeland and Other Stories

“It's frightening, she thinks, how when the going gets rough you fall back on whatever awful think you grew up with.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from Homeland and Other Stories

“Parenting is something that happens mostly while you’re thinking of something else.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from Homeland and Other Stories

“She is too absorbed in the difficulties of being seventeen to want to hear the confusions of forty-four.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from Homeland and Other Stories

“Sometimes that happens. Children can be your heartache. But that doesn’t matter, you have to go on and have them,” she said. “It works out.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from Homeland and Other Stories

“It's a relief to share the uncomplicated affection that has passed between people and their dogs for thousands of years.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from Homeland and Other Stories

“Over the phone, her laughter sounded like a warm bath.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from Homeland and Other Stories

“I loved the time spent with him, but felt in some other chamber of my heart that it was time wasted. That I ought to be doing something else while there was time.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from Homeland and Other Stories

“I don't know," Magda says, "Seems like that's just how it is with you and me. We're like islands on the moon.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from Homeland and Other Stories

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Popular quotes

“Right from the first, I could see a calmness in you - that sort of inner tranquility that they write about in books, but that almost no one seems to possess. I was wondering to myself: How does she do that? And I figured it could only come from having no regrets - from having made choices with .... such poise and purpose.”
― Amor Towles, quote from Rules of Civility

“It shouldn't be the consumer's responsibility to figure out what's cruel and what's kind, what's environmentally destructive and what's sustainable. Cruel and destructive food products should be illegal. We don't need the option of buying children's toys made with lead paint, or aerosols with chlorofluorocarbons, or medicines with unlabeled side effects. And we don't need the option of buying factory-farmed animals.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, quote from Eating Animals

“Youth was the time for happiness, its only season; young people, leading a lazy, carefree life, partially occupied by scarcely absorbing studies, were able to devote themselves unlimitedly to the liberated exultation of their bodies. They could play, dance, love, and multiply their pleasures. They could leave a party, in the early hours of the morning, in the company of sexual partners they had chosen, and contemplate the dreary line of employees going to work. They were the salt of the earth, and everything was given to them, everything was permitted for them, everything was possible. Later on, having started a family, having entered the adult world, they would be introduced to worry, work, responsibility, and the difficulties of existence; they would have to pay taxes, submit themselves to administrative formalities while ceaselessly bearing witness--powerless and shame-filled--to the irreversible degradation of their own bodies, which would be slow at first, then increasingly rapid; above all, they would have to look after children, mortal enemies, in their own homes, they would have to pamper them, feed them, worry about their illnesses, provide the means for their education and their pleasure, and unlike in the world of animals, this would last not just for a season, they would remain slaves of their offspring always, the time of joy was well and truly over for them, they would have to continue to suffer until the end, in pain and with increasing health problems, until they were no longer good for anything and were definitively thrown into the rubbish heap, cumbersome and useless. In return, their children would not be at all grateful, on the contrary their efforts, however strenuous, would never be considered enough, they would, until the bitter end, be considered guilty because of the simple fact of being parents. From this sad life, marked by shame, all joy would be pitilessly banished. When they wanted to draw near to young people's bodies, they would be chased away, rejected, ridiculed, insulted, and, more and more often nowadays, imprisoned. The physical bodies of young people, the only desirable possession the world has ever produced, were reserved for the exclusive use of the young, and the fate of the old was to work and to suffer. This was the true meaning of solidarity between generations; it was a pure and simple holocaust of each generation in favor of the one that replaced it, a cruel, prolonged holocaust that brought with it no consolation, no comfort, nor any material or emotional compensation.”
― Michel Houellebecq, quote from The Possibility of an Island

“To be right with God the judge is a great thing, but to be loved and cared for by God the Father is a greater.”
― J.I. Packer, quote from Knowing God

“... deep down nobody is bad, only frightened.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, quote from The Prisoner of Heaven

Interesting books

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.